Stalemate: Opening Gambit
Sep. 4th, 2005 09:42 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsNathan makes it across town just in time, only to discover that his uncle withheld certain key facts about who exactly he could expect to run into. The unexpected reunion does not go well.
The office was fairly dimly lit - just the light on the desk. Pete was sitting there, flipping the files the courier had handed him, commiting them to memory. He glanced at down at the monitor on the hallway, and saw it flicker briefly. That'd be Nate, then.
He stood up, and nodded to the courier.
"Thanks. You've brought me everything I need. You can go."
As the other man turned to leave, Pete pulled a lighter from his pocket, and flicked it on.
Nathan's jaw clenched as he saw a man - the courier, most likely, to judge by the fact that he was quite obviously a telepath - step back out of the office and stop, gazing at him warily.
#I've already given it to the client,# the man sent, his mental voice thin, without much in the way of power behind it. #You're late.#
He was so not late... oh, fuck it. #Get out of here, then,# Nathan sent back scorchingly. #And tell my uncle that the next time he says an hour, he'd better mean an hour.# He stepped aside to let the other telepath past, then strode down the hall towards the office.
Pete dropped the last of the documents into the small blaze in the metal wastebin, just as he heard Nate open the door. He turned round calmly, slipping the lighter back into his trouser pocket, and closing his fingers around another small metal object.
"Hello, old son. This a social call?"
The office door was open, and Nathan stepped in, a TK shield forming around him - and dropping, as he saw the man standing behind the desk and heard the familiar voice greeting him. A slight widening of his eyes was his only outward reaction, and the initial flash of shock was quickly drowned in ice-cold rage.
Pete. Buying information from Gideon. Buying this information from Gideon. And Gideon - this had to have been deliberate. A fucking set-up. Of course. Just not one he'd expected.
"Been getting personal lessons from Frost or something?" Nathan asked, almost conversationally. "I knew someone was in here but I couldn't tell it was you."
"So, no chance you just fancied going for a beer, then?" Pete smiled, just slightly. "Pity. How've you been, anyway?"
"Oh, fine. Not sleeping much - four am feedings will do that. Reconnecting with family, too." Nathan's jaw clenched as he caught the scent in the room. Burned paper. He'd burned the files. Which meant that the only place the information was, was in Pete's head. "So are you and my psychopathic bastard of an uncle on good terms, or is this is just a business relationship?"
"He's a first rate headcase, isn't he? It's strictly business. Everything is, these days. Makes life much easier all round. Hell, I had no idea you even *had* an uncle until the other month." Pete pulled a cigarette from a pack with his free hand, and lit it with a fingertip.
"So you're enjoying being a Dad?"
"I wish," Nathan said very quietly, watching Pete light the cigarette, "that there was a chance in hell of you ever meeting her. She's beautiful. She looks like her mother." And thinking about Rachel was almost enough to get him to turn around and walk right back out of this room.
Almost.
"Yeah, well, turns out we don't always get what we want." Pete shrugged. "Still, life goes on. And as amusing as all this is, I've got a few other appointments to keep tonight. I assume that Farraday told you that you'd learn something here, but I'm not in the mood to play his stupid fucking games, so if you'll excuse me..."
"No." Nathan didn't move from in front of the door. "If it was just the information, I'd turn around and walk out of here." As he said it, he realized that he meant it. If it had just been information that could have been useful... but it wasn't. "But," he went on, his voice level, "there are a number of people on the ground in Africa right now who can use it to take down those camps. And you are not," he said, a little anger creeping into his voice finally, "walking out of here with it in your head."
"You don't want to do this. You really don't." Pete stood up slowly. "On another day, I'd have stuck it all in the post to you myself, if I thought anyone at Xavier's would listen to a damn word I said. But today, I'm doing business, and I'm only as good as my word. So you're not going to get to take it from me, no matter how much you want to pass it on to Dom and the rest of them."
"You stupid son of a bitch." The anger was getting just a little bit ahead of him. Maybe. "If anyone would have listened?" No. Not making this personal. This was not about him or Pete. "I don't want to do this," he said again, his voice low and savage. "Gideon obviously set this up and the idea that I'm playing his game is almost enough..." He stopped, giving his head one quick shake. "No," he said, pushing thoughts of Dom and Amanda out of his head. "This is too far, Pete. I'm sorry."
"Ah, the tedious moral superiority part of the night's entertainment. I'll try it once more, before something happens that you're going to regret: I'm a legitimate businessman, conducting legitimate business. That fact that I'm dealing with a load of shady bastards is nothing new, it's just that I'm doing it for myself rather than the bald git, these days. The fact that I have a business relationship with your uncle is none of your business, except that he wants to yank your fucking chain."
Pete blew smoke down his nostrils. "You want to know what I know, you get you uncle to tell you, then same way I got him to tell me, but you don't get to fucking drag me in to your family feud after everyone turned their fucking back on me when it was my fucking family. You try and drag me into it, you stick your nose into the running of my life, and I'll have to make you wish you hadn't."
"You're not getting it," Nathan said, more flatly. "I don't care. Your business interests mean absolutely nothing to me, and given that they've involved you in an African version of fucking Mistra, your sense of being betrayed is rapidly ceasing to matter much." He gave Pete a tight, humorless smile. "The only question I'm asking myself right now is whether the lives of the kids in those camps are worth doing something that yes, I am probably going to regret. One way or the other."
A flicker of telekinesis sent the desk flying out from between them to shatter against the wall. "Yes," Nathan said, hands clenching into fists at his sides as telekinetic force gathered around him. "They are. And besides, Pete. You're here. Gideon isn't."
"Alright then. So much for old times' sake." Pete shrugged, and dropped his cigarette. "Just remember: I gave you every chance to walk the fuck away. You're the one wanted this, not me."
Pete pressed the button on the transmitter in his pocket.
"You should have known I'd have secured my fucking offices."
And then he threw a load of hotknives at Nate.
The last time Nathan had felt this effect had been a snowbound forest in Canada, when Konstantakis had thrown the IR grenade at him. Then, it had only been for a few moments, the pain and loss of control only brief.
This wasn't anything like the grenade. There was a sudden mechanical whine in the air, and then it was like his nervous system was being short-circuited. The TK shield he'd had up shattered, even as the first of the hotknives impacted it, and if the pain hadn't sent him to his knees the rest of the hotknives probably would have gone right through his head.
EM distortion. A very particular kind of EM distortion. His TK went wild, lashing outwards, shattering the windows, flinging what little else there was in the way of furniture around, and turning a wide swath of the office wall into glass.
...secured my fucking offices. Nathan caught himself before he could fall the rest of the way to the floor and focused doggedly on a pattern, a simple one. A shield. Had to shield while he got back up...
But the EM bombardment wasn't stopping.
Pete ducked the direct lash of Nate's TK, though an airborne chair caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder, almost spinning him. As he righted himself, and went to close, he shrugged, almost to himself, and suddenly his hands were shrouded in a solid wrap of energy, much like Nate's had been a moment ago.
Glowing. Not like normal hotknife-glow. Nathan could hardly see, his eyesight spiraling in and out of altered-perception uncontrollably, but he saw energy where there shouldn't be. At that point, he could have stopped to wonder just what Pete had been learning from whom, but he had a limited amount of coherent thought available to him, and he used it to try the TK-armor. Just to try. Not enough focus, and while he was pulling something together in the way of protection, it wasn't enough...
Pete hammered down on the shields almost as fast as Nate could put them together - they were turning aside the worst of the energy, but enough was getting through to keep the other man on the defensive for now.
"Damn you, Nate. I haven't had to do this in years..."
Anger lent him a sudden moment of focus. Had to? Choice, this was all choice, and if Pete didn't see that...
There. Another pattern, pulling itself together despite the tearing interference of the EM distortion. Nathan gritted his teeth and pushed - Pete away to arm's length, and himself up to his feet.
"Fuck you," he snarled, choking on blood and not stopping to think of what that meant. Part of the wall tore away, rubble hurling itself at Pete. But the backlash as the EM field reacted to his use of his powers sent Nathan reeling. His grip on all but a little of the rubble slipped as he clutched at his skull, a noise of pure agony catching in his throat.
Pete staggered back under the lash of TK and rubble, feeling it hammer home. He braced himself for a second against the wall, then launched himself back at Nate.
"Amanda ain't here to save us this time..."
Couldn't bounce Pete off a shield. Couldn't freeze him in place. All Nathan could do was try and use Pete's rush and his own greater weight to try and get the upper hand physically. Easier said than done, when his coordination had gone the way of his concentration.
He tried something else. As he and Pete both landed on the floor and he smelled cloth starting to burn, even as he felt the heat, he hit Pete telepathically. There was no focus behind the attack, but a hell of a lot of force.
Pete yelled in agony as he felt something sear across his brain. Whatever Nate had hit him with wasn't playing well with the things Charles had left in there. He felt blood pour from his nose, and lashed out with as much energy as he could pull around his arms, shoving Nate away almost on instinct.
It was like something had blown up in his face. And he'd been around enough explosions to know the feeling. Nathan rolled and came back to his feet, but then staggered, nearly falling again as an entirely new kind of pain made itself known. He hadn't been shielding, and the only consolation was that it hurt immediately. Burns weren't as bad when you felt them right away. He didn't look at his arms. He looked at Pete, obviously affected by the telepathic hit, and only wished he could do it again. But he couldn't fucking concentrate. Maybe if he bought himself a minute...
Wheezing, the taste of blood at the back of his throat almost overwhelming, he lurched at Pete again.
Pete hauled himself to his feet, the blood still pouring down his face. His right arm had gone dead below the shoulder - whatever way he landed when Nate had brought them crashing down had done it no good, and his vision was still swimming. He threw a badly focused spread of knives at Nate, hoping to drop him before he managed anything like that telepathic blast again.
Their very lack of focus made them hellish to block. Would have even if he'd been able to shield properly. Nathan managed to deflect a few, but a couple got through. He threw himself desperately to one side but both hit, one clipping his upper leg, the other searing along his ribs.
And he was on the ground again. Gasping desperately for air, now completely unable to ignore the fact that he couldn't breathe and he knew why, knew that it wasn't just the pain.
"Should've...fucked off." Pete gritted his teeth. Whatever Nate had done in his head, the pain wasn't diminishing by much. If he could just knock the bastard out - he aimed a kick to the side of Nate's head as he struggled to come to his feet.
Nathan got an arm up, blocking the kick, feeling something crack in his arm as he did. It was pure instinct, forcing him into action even as his vision started to go black around the edges from the lack of oxygen. Couldn't get knocked out. Something seemed to tear in his chest as he moved, though, and although he tried to follow through, use the momentum of the kick to pull himself back up, he was choking on blood.
"For God's...sake," Pete muttered, and landed a punch into Nate's ribs, trying to displace what little air the man had left...
Black around the edges turned into white with pain, and Nathan fell back against the rubble-strewn floor, unable to draw any air at all into his lungs. The distortion was still tearing at his mind, tearing apart any pattern he tried to visualize.
He tried to move and couldn't. Could barely lift his head.
Pete sat down, and watched Nate lose conciousness. When he was satisfied that he was well and truly out, he reached into his pocket, and sent another signal to kill the EM generation.
Then he hauled himself to his feet, and looked down.
"You've got no idea how much I wish that hadn't just happened, but I don't need you up and about for what comes next."
Wincing, he staggered away. The X-men would be on their way by now, and he really wasn't in any shape to deal with any of them.
The office was fairly dimly lit - just the light on the desk. Pete was sitting there, flipping the files the courier had handed him, commiting them to memory. He glanced at down at the monitor on the hallway, and saw it flicker briefly. That'd be Nate, then.
He stood up, and nodded to the courier.
"Thanks. You've brought me everything I need. You can go."
As the other man turned to leave, Pete pulled a lighter from his pocket, and flicked it on.
Nathan's jaw clenched as he saw a man - the courier, most likely, to judge by the fact that he was quite obviously a telepath - step back out of the office and stop, gazing at him warily.
#I've already given it to the client,# the man sent, his mental voice thin, without much in the way of power behind it. #You're late.#
He was so not late... oh, fuck it. #Get out of here, then,# Nathan sent back scorchingly. #And tell my uncle that the next time he says an hour, he'd better mean an hour.# He stepped aside to let the other telepath past, then strode down the hall towards the office.
Pete dropped the last of the documents into the small blaze in the metal wastebin, just as he heard Nate open the door. He turned round calmly, slipping the lighter back into his trouser pocket, and closing his fingers around another small metal object.
"Hello, old son. This a social call?"
The office door was open, and Nathan stepped in, a TK shield forming around him - and dropping, as he saw the man standing behind the desk and heard the familiar voice greeting him. A slight widening of his eyes was his only outward reaction, and the initial flash of shock was quickly drowned in ice-cold rage.
Pete. Buying information from Gideon. Buying this information from Gideon. And Gideon - this had to have been deliberate. A fucking set-up. Of course. Just not one he'd expected.
"Been getting personal lessons from Frost or something?" Nathan asked, almost conversationally. "I knew someone was in here but I couldn't tell it was you."
"So, no chance you just fancied going for a beer, then?" Pete smiled, just slightly. "Pity. How've you been, anyway?"
"Oh, fine. Not sleeping much - four am feedings will do that. Reconnecting with family, too." Nathan's jaw clenched as he caught the scent in the room. Burned paper. He'd burned the files. Which meant that the only place the information was, was in Pete's head. "So are you and my psychopathic bastard of an uncle on good terms, or is this is just a business relationship?"
"He's a first rate headcase, isn't he? It's strictly business. Everything is, these days. Makes life much easier all round. Hell, I had no idea you even *had* an uncle until the other month." Pete pulled a cigarette from a pack with his free hand, and lit it with a fingertip.
"So you're enjoying being a Dad?"
"I wish," Nathan said very quietly, watching Pete light the cigarette, "that there was a chance in hell of you ever meeting her. She's beautiful. She looks like her mother." And thinking about Rachel was almost enough to get him to turn around and walk right back out of this room.
Almost.
"Yeah, well, turns out we don't always get what we want." Pete shrugged. "Still, life goes on. And as amusing as all this is, I've got a few other appointments to keep tonight. I assume that Farraday told you that you'd learn something here, but I'm not in the mood to play his stupid fucking games, so if you'll excuse me..."
"No." Nathan didn't move from in front of the door. "If it was just the information, I'd turn around and walk out of here." As he said it, he realized that he meant it. If it had just been information that could have been useful... but it wasn't. "But," he went on, his voice level, "there are a number of people on the ground in Africa right now who can use it to take down those camps. And you are not," he said, a little anger creeping into his voice finally, "walking out of here with it in your head."
"You don't want to do this. You really don't." Pete stood up slowly. "On another day, I'd have stuck it all in the post to you myself, if I thought anyone at Xavier's would listen to a damn word I said. But today, I'm doing business, and I'm only as good as my word. So you're not going to get to take it from me, no matter how much you want to pass it on to Dom and the rest of them."
"You stupid son of a bitch." The anger was getting just a little bit ahead of him. Maybe. "If anyone would have listened?" No. Not making this personal. This was not about him or Pete. "I don't want to do this," he said again, his voice low and savage. "Gideon obviously set this up and the idea that I'm playing his game is almost enough..." He stopped, giving his head one quick shake. "No," he said, pushing thoughts of Dom and Amanda out of his head. "This is too far, Pete. I'm sorry."
"Ah, the tedious moral superiority part of the night's entertainment. I'll try it once more, before something happens that you're going to regret: I'm a legitimate businessman, conducting legitimate business. That fact that I'm dealing with a load of shady bastards is nothing new, it's just that I'm doing it for myself rather than the bald git, these days. The fact that I have a business relationship with your uncle is none of your business, except that he wants to yank your fucking chain."
Pete blew smoke down his nostrils. "You want to know what I know, you get you uncle to tell you, then same way I got him to tell me, but you don't get to fucking drag me in to your family feud after everyone turned their fucking back on me when it was my fucking family. You try and drag me into it, you stick your nose into the running of my life, and I'll have to make you wish you hadn't."
"You're not getting it," Nathan said, more flatly. "I don't care. Your business interests mean absolutely nothing to me, and given that they've involved you in an African version of fucking Mistra, your sense of being betrayed is rapidly ceasing to matter much." He gave Pete a tight, humorless smile. "The only question I'm asking myself right now is whether the lives of the kids in those camps are worth doing something that yes, I am probably going to regret. One way or the other."
A flicker of telekinesis sent the desk flying out from between them to shatter against the wall. "Yes," Nathan said, hands clenching into fists at his sides as telekinetic force gathered around him. "They are. And besides, Pete. You're here. Gideon isn't."
"Alright then. So much for old times' sake." Pete shrugged, and dropped his cigarette. "Just remember: I gave you every chance to walk the fuck away. You're the one wanted this, not me."
Pete pressed the button on the transmitter in his pocket.
"You should have known I'd have secured my fucking offices."
And then he threw a load of hotknives at Nate.
The last time Nathan had felt this effect had been a snowbound forest in Canada, when Konstantakis had thrown the IR grenade at him. Then, it had only been for a few moments, the pain and loss of control only brief.
This wasn't anything like the grenade. There was a sudden mechanical whine in the air, and then it was like his nervous system was being short-circuited. The TK shield he'd had up shattered, even as the first of the hotknives impacted it, and if the pain hadn't sent him to his knees the rest of the hotknives probably would have gone right through his head.
EM distortion. A very particular kind of EM distortion. His TK went wild, lashing outwards, shattering the windows, flinging what little else there was in the way of furniture around, and turning a wide swath of the office wall into glass.
...secured my fucking offices. Nathan caught himself before he could fall the rest of the way to the floor and focused doggedly on a pattern, a simple one. A shield. Had to shield while he got back up...
But the EM bombardment wasn't stopping.
Pete ducked the direct lash of Nate's TK, though an airborne chair caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder, almost spinning him. As he righted himself, and went to close, he shrugged, almost to himself, and suddenly his hands were shrouded in a solid wrap of energy, much like Nate's had been a moment ago.
Glowing. Not like normal hotknife-glow. Nathan could hardly see, his eyesight spiraling in and out of altered-perception uncontrollably, but he saw energy where there shouldn't be. At that point, he could have stopped to wonder just what Pete had been learning from whom, but he had a limited amount of coherent thought available to him, and he used it to try the TK-armor. Just to try. Not enough focus, and while he was pulling something together in the way of protection, it wasn't enough...
Pete hammered down on the shields almost as fast as Nate could put them together - they were turning aside the worst of the energy, but enough was getting through to keep the other man on the defensive for now.
"Damn you, Nate. I haven't had to do this in years..."
Anger lent him a sudden moment of focus. Had to? Choice, this was all choice, and if Pete didn't see that...
There. Another pattern, pulling itself together despite the tearing interference of the EM distortion. Nathan gritted his teeth and pushed - Pete away to arm's length, and himself up to his feet.
"Fuck you," he snarled, choking on blood and not stopping to think of what that meant. Part of the wall tore away, rubble hurling itself at Pete. But the backlash as the EM field reacted to his use of his powers sent Nathan reeling. His grip on all but a little of the rubble slipped as he clutched at his skull, a noise of pure agony catching in his throat.
Pete staggered back under the lash of TK and rubble, feeling it hammer home. He braced himself for a second against the wall, then launched himself back at Nate.
"Amanda ain't here to save us this time..."
Couldn't bounce Pete off a shield. Couldn't freeze him in place. All Nathan could do was try and use Pete's rush and his own greater weight to try and get the upper hand physically. Easier said than done, when his coordination had gone the way of his concentration.
He tried something else. As he and Pete both landed on the floor and he smelled cloth starting to burn, even as he felt the heat, he hit Pete telepathically. There was no focus behind the attack, but a hell of a lot of force.
Pete yelled in agony as he felt something sear across his brain. Whatever Nate had hit him with wasn't playing well with the things Charles had left in there. He felt blood pour from his nose, and lashed out with as much energy as he could pull around his arms, shoving Nate away almost on instinct.
It was like something had blown up in his face. And he'd been around enough explosions to know the feeling. Nathan rolled and came back to his feet, but then staggered, nearly falling again as an entirely new kind of pain made itself known. He hadn't been shielding, and the only consolation was that it hurt immediately. Burns weren't as bad when you felt them right away. He didn't look at his arms. He looked at Pete, obviously affected by the telepathic hit, and only wished he could do it again. But he couldn't fucking concentrate. Maybe if he bought himself a minute...
Wheezing, the taste of blood at the back of his throat almost overwhelming, he lurched at Pete again.
Pete hauled himself to his feet, the blood still pouring down his face. His right arm had gone dead below the shoulder - whatever way he landed when Nate had brought them crashing down had done it no good, and his vision was still swimming. He threw a badly focused spread of knives at Nate, hoping to drop him before he managed anything like that telepathic blast again.
Their very lack of focus made them hellish to block. Would have even if he'd been able to shield properly. Nathan managed to deflect a few, but a couple got through. He threw himself desperately to one side but both hit, one clipping his upper leg, the other searing along his ribs.
And he was on the ground again. Gasping desperately for air, now completely unable to ignore the fact that he couldn't breathe and he knew why, knew that it wasn't just the pain.
"Should've...fucked off." Pete gritted his teeth. Whatever Nate had done in his head, the pain wasn't diminishing by much. If he could just knock the bastard out - he aimed a kick to the side of Nate's head as he struggled to come to his feet.
Nathan got an arm up, blocking the kick, feeling something crack in his arm as he did. It was pure instinct, forcing him into action even as his vision started to go black around the edges from the lack of oxygen. Couldn't get knocked out. Something seemed to tear in his chest as he moved, though, and although he tried to follow through, use the momentum of the kick to pull himself back up, he was choking on blood.
"For God's...sake," Pete muttered, and landed a punch into Nate's ribs, trying to displace what little air the man had left...
Black around the edges turned into white with pain, and Nathan fell back against the rubble-strewn floor, unable to draw any air at all into his lungs. The distortion was still tearing at his mind, tearing apart any pattern he tried to visualize.
He tried to move and couldn't. Could barely lift his head.
Pete sat down, and watched Nate lose conciousness. When he was satisfied that he was well and truly out, he reached into his pocket, and sent another signal to kill the EM generation.
Then he hauled himself to his feet, and looked down.
"You've got no idea how much I wish that hadn't just happened, but I don't need you up and about for what comes next."
Wincing, he staggered away. The X-men would be on their way by now, and he really wasn't in any shape to deal with any of them.
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Date: 2005-09-04 08:45 pm (UTC)I do believe Pete wins. Just in general.
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Date: 2005-09-04 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-04 09:31 pm (UTC)...yep, read it a third time. Still "skdfsdsdfGLEE!" and Pete still wins.
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Date: 2005-09-04 10:45 pm (UTC)God, I need a drink...
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Date: 2005-09-04 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-04 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-05 12:33 am (UTC)*sighs* And people wonder why I'm fucked up, with family like this...