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xp_logsCannonball, Cyclops, Kylun and Sunfire go around the back to sneak in quietly. But, as always, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Or the team.
The back entrance to the fighting arena was an abandoned loading dock, with a door that had obviously seen better days. It looked heavily rusted, and wouldn't budge to the heaving attempts of any of the three X-Men standing in front of it. Sam grimaced, then chuckled wryly. "So, draw straws to blow this thing down?" he drawled, assessing his teammates, since any of the three could have easily dealt with a rusted-shut door. "'Cept, really, it probably shouldn't be me. Ah make too much of a racket, an' the idea is to be at least a -little-bit subtle, right?"
"Let me try," Scott said, moving forward and remembering what he'd done to Hodge's door in Oregon. A little more tricky, when it was rust rather than a lock, but if he kept the beam fine enough... Narrowing his eye, he knelt down. "This shouldn't be too noisy," he said, keeping his voice low. "Might take me a few minutes, though."
Shiro's right hand lit up with golden flames. "Would you like some help?" he asked. He'd spent enough time with Haroun and the Blackbird to have learned to become a human plasma torch. He placed his hand on the door, concentrating and focusing the plasma to melt through the metal as he slowly traced his fingers over the rust.
Scott flinched, but the beam slicing through the rust, though it stuttered for a moment, came right back on, steady. "Sunfire, don't sneak up on my blind side like that," he murmured, focusing on what he was doing. The prosthesis had pinged him on the younger X-Man's approach, and rather harshly.
Sam merely stepped back and kept watch for anyone coming into the loading area, as his power would have instantly given away that people were there. Scott and Shiro were much quieter in the use of their powers.
"There," Scott murmured, gesturing at Shiro to step back. He pulled the door open slowly, relieved at the minimal amount of noise. Hopefully most people in the warehouse would be on the other side, where the 'show' was going on. That was the whole point of sneaking in the back in the first place. And yet... "Kylun, take point," he said quietly, after a moment's thought. If anyone did see them, they needed to be taken down as quickly and as quietly as possible. "We can't afford to be noticed just yet."
Kylun nodded silently and slipped through the door, low and alert, his feet making no noise on the loading dock's concrete floor. He saw a door at the far end, slightly ajar, the knob dangling broken, and angled toward it, looking for a vantage from which he could see as much as could be seen through the crack.
And the door cracked open further, to reveal a large going-to-seed man, in sweatpants and a tank top. "Hey! Hey-hey-hey! You guys can't be back here! You wanna try out or something, you gotta go talk to Vinnie." Christ, the fighters were getting weirder and weirder. First, Faber and his wacky colored hair and then some guy who -thought- he was a mutie but really wasn't and his green hair and stupid mask, and now these guys. Geez, and one of 'em had fur and everything.
Kylun curled his lip--half at the man's oily voice, half at himself for being seen when he hadn't meant to be. "We are not here for your 'tryouts,'" he said coldly--and even before the words were out of his mouth he was moving, a quick eye-fake drawing the oily man's hands up a bare instant before he folded around Kylun's knee.
"Our best hope now may be speed," he informed the others as he dragged the gasping thug back into the loading dock. "Especially if this one is expected somewhere soon."
"Why do my plans always last five minutes?" Scott muttered, shaking his head. And they were usually such good plans, too. "Let's get going, then. Room to room search, as quickly as we can. We want to find Kyle and get out of here without attracting any more attention, if at all possible..."
Sam shrugged. "Ya haven't come ta expect it with us? Besides, you're the one always quoting about how no plan survives contact with the enemy. It's just that none of your plans survive contact with the team," he joked, darting after Kylun's silent form.
While Cannonball, Sunfire, Kylun and Cyclops look for Kyle, The Juggernaut and The Wolverine provide... a distraction, capitalize on their reputations, and much to their disappointment, are a tag-team.
Cain Marko cracked his knuckles, trying to resist the urge to shove his fist down the throat of the weaselly booker sitting across the desk. The noise of the crowd in the converted warehouse behind them drowned out the popping as he clenched his fists and leaned forward.
"I'm telling you, you got folks that'll want to see this. That runt over there's the goddamn Wolverine - name ring a bell?" He jerked a thumb at Logan, who hadn't moved from his spot leaning against the doorframe.
"And you're the Juggernaut?" The booker's face was impassive behind thick glasses. "As in the urban legend, mountain that walks, seen less than Bigfoot? Hey! Maybe that'll be a great match!" he said sarcastically. "Tell you what, you bring me Bigfoot, and I'll get you a match!"
Logan lit his cigar with a practiced flick of his lighter. "It's real simple. Can't get you bigfoot, but we can set you up a brawl the likes of which you ain't ever seen." he said. "You'll sell millions. The big guy here? Hoists boxcars for a workout and never gasses out. Me? I don't break, don't quit, and don't go down. It's a sure thing."
"And you two want to fight each other, in that octagon, just like that?" The booker narrowed his eyes, then checked a sheet in front of him. Picking up his cell phone, he hit a speed-dial button. "Yeah, Johnny? Those two kids from Philly shown up yet? No? Tell them they ain't getting paid, they're bumped. Right. Got something else to surprise the folks. Yeah. Call Eric, tell him the Kleinstocks are on in five."
Setting the phone down, he pulled two sheets of paper out and slid them across the desk. "Sign the waivers. You two are in. I don't give a damn if you are who you say you are, this absolves us of any responsibility if you break your neck out there. Hurry it up, they're taking the octagon apart for your match."
Cain looked over Logan's head to where the crowd was moving back, the plexiglass walls of the enclosed octagon being replaced with folding wooden tables and various objects - ladders, garbage cans, axe handles?
The bookie smiled and held out the waivers. "The only rule is that there are no rules, gentleman. Beat them if you can. Survive if they let you."
Logan glanced at the paperwork and scrawled his signature down at the bottom. He didn't care if he got paid, and it wasn't like he _could_ get seriously hurt by anything that could happen in the ring there. "No rules, eh?" he said with an evil chuckle. "And how serious of a beating are we talking? KO or what?"
"You go until someone calls it quits or can't answer a ten count," the booker said, pointing towards the doorway. "You wouldn't be here if you didn't know what was in store. This is a fight, not an artillery range. Last team standing wins. Get out there."
Cain stepped through the door, then paused. "Wait, TEAM? We're a team?"
Logan stopped and blinked. "Wait. This was supposed to be me versus the big lug here. Now yer tellin' me we're a team?" he said, a hair's breath after Cain stopped talking. He then looked Cain - sizing him up, calculating.
"You want to fight, get moving," the booker said coldly. One by one, the audience was beginning to turn and look to where Cain and Logan were standing. Even among the mostly-mutant fighters, someone standing over seven feet tall attracted a bit of attention.
"Fuck it, we improvise," Cain grumbled quietly to Logan, stalking down the aisle toward the makeshift battleground that was set up.
"Piece of cake. We'll be home in time for cold ones at Harry's." he said, cracking his knuckles with a series of metallic *pops*. "You ever done this before?" he asked, not taking his eyes off the ring for a second.
Cain looked down at Logan, his first reply drowned out by the commentator announcing their arrival in an impromptu no-holds-barred partners match, to the crowd's chorus of mixed cheers and boos. In a break of silence, he simply shrugged.
"I ain't a stranger to scraps. They say distraction, I figure we give them one hell of a distraction."
Logan shrugged in return. "Think you can make it look good?" he asked, just before they got to ringside. "Give Bravo Team time to get their shit done and exfiltrate."
"Think you can remember which fucking side you're on?" Cain shot back before the crowd erupted into applause.
"Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the only two-man undefeated fighting tandem of the last seven years, accompanied by their brother Eric, I give you Sven and Harlan, the Kleinstock Brothers!"
The two men that lumbered in lockstep towards the arena floor were maybe one or two generations removed from Cro-Magnon, from the looks of them. Twins, each over six and a half feet tall and easily as broad as Cain. Their brother, looking for all the world like a half-size version of Sven and Harlan, followed beside them, megaphone in one hand, clipboard in the other, shouting incomprehensible encouragement to his siblings.
Cain looked over at Logan, a mixture of amusement and confusion crossing his face. "Brothers?" he said with a smirk.
Logan just rolled his eyes. "Great." he said. "You want first shot at 'em?" he asked, rolling his neck to another chorus of metallic cracking sounds. "No sign of obvious augment. Figure strong and tough?" he asked.
"Let's see how tough," Cain answered, stepping forward as soon as one of the two - Sven, according to the tattoo across his throat - entered the circle.
Without any warning, Cain shot a jab at the other fighter's face. Not even bothering to go at full strength, no telling if this guy would be able to take the impact without punching his jaw through the back of his skull.
That is, if the blow had connected.
In a blur of semi-transparent afterimages, Sven seemed to blink out of existence, appearing at Harlan's side. In the same motion, Harlan blurred forward, appearing in Sven's place as Cain's punch passed, expertly tripping him face-down onto the concrete.
"Point to us, yah?" Harlan laughed, giving the thumbs-up to his brother. He then turned to look at Logan, giving the thumbs-down and a sneer. "Show us what you are having, little man, yah?"
Logan just quirked an eyebrow and advanced slowly. Since he didn't know what he was dealing with, he had to be absolutely sure to land anything he was going to land lest the brothers do that blurry crap again. Up on the balls of his feet, cranked up, out on the pointy end, and ready to rock. He advanced on Harlan with a slight grin on his face, waiting for the big man to make his move.
Harlan stepped forward, wild punch sailing right over Logan's head. Exactly as intended. As Logan ducked, Harlan blurred backwards, replaced by Sven in mid-knee strike, catching Logan in the ribs. Nothing to damage, just a fighter's cocky declaration of "I'm here, what've you got?"
What Logan had, besides adamantium ribs, was a fist to Sven's midsection. A full-strength I'm-not-playing-with-you strike intended to break bone, paralyze a solar plexus, or just generally mess someone up.
Sven's momentum worked in his favor, as he rose up on his toes with Logan's blow, letting the force carry him over the shorter man's head rather than cause serious damage. Rolling into a crouch, he spat out a small bit of blood onto the concrete, earning a gasp from the crowd.
"Hits hard, yah?" he called over to Harlan. "Tough little scrappah."
Cain lifted his head from where he'd tumbled on the concrete, seeing the smaller Kleinstock, Eric, crouching in his face. "Not to be taking chances, big man," the dwarf laughed, moving his hand to his waistband, then towards Cain's face in a snapping motion.
"Fuck!" Cain yelped. Whatever that stuff was, it burned like rock salt. Flailing about, he rose to a knee, pawing at his eyes. "I can't fucking see, Logan!"
"BUSY!" Logan roared, going after Sven - or was it Harlan? Anyway, one of the Kleinstocks was here in the ring, and he needed to go down. Permanent-like. He kept the claws in but he let the beast out. Roaring, he snapped in hard, launching a scything kick to the much bigger man's knee. He wasn't too worried about anything the guy could dish out, but he kept a close eye out for that blurry teleportation crap.
Before the kick could land, Harlan was in front of his brother, and only Logan's preternatural reflexes kept him from falling prey to a nasty counterstrike.
"Dontcha be hitting my brother twice, yah?" the dark-haired goliath singsonged, splitting up with his twin to circle Logan. "We do the hitting twice, hey?"
Logan avoided a high-low kick combo from the twins, backing up into Cain, who luckily swung over the shorter man's head, connecting with Harlan's temple. "Who'd I hit?" he bellowed, still trying to scrape the powder from his eyes.
"THEM! Swing _harder_!" Logan cried, stepping out into his own quick one-two-three-four combo aimed for head, head, throat, and solar plexus, respectively. Logan had excellent handspeed and was using _all_ of it. These guys looked like they could take a beating or two, and Logan was just itching to give it to them.
The advantage of being teleporters was that the twins could easily trade places to soak up the impact of blows, effectively halving Logan's offensive flurry. However, even halved, Wolverine was twice the fighter of any man in the room, and the Kleinstocks found themselves on the defensive.
Cain's vision slowly resolved from a series of dark blurs into light blurs. Figuring the smallest to be Logan, he slowly moved forward. "How far away are-" A smash at the back of his skull cut him off, letting him know one of the Kleinstocks had grabbed a folding chair from the crowd and decided to up the ante a bit. Lashing out, Cain's fist met only empty air, then two more strikes hit the back of his knees, and he reflexively dropped to a crouch.
"Still fucking blind, man!" he hollered. "Buy me time!"
"Working on it!" he said, and kept up the flurry. Sure, they could soak the hits, but all that meant is that he'd have to throw twice the moves. Finally, one of the Kleinstocks made a tactical mistake. They threw a punch at Logan when he was ready for it. Logan met the punch fist-to-fist, splaying the man's hand like so much devilled ham against his unbreakable bones. The *CRUNCH* had to have been audible into the first four rows.
"Mother of the fuckers!" Harlan crowed, blurring backwards to Eric's side, letting his smaller brother look at his hand. The crowd ate it up, cheering with restrained bloodlust.
Sven narrowed his eyes. "Short bastard gotta pay, you betcha." Curling his legs, he leaped into the air, reaching an apex, then vanishing -reappearing behind Logan with the force of momentum, hitting a kidney shot that sent the shorter X-Men prone.
"Harlan!" he shouted, hearing the echo from the crowd, "get the tables!"
"CAIN!" Logan shouted - or at least tried to. Fucker caught him at just the wrong - right? - angle with that rabbit kick. Something inside ruptured and was leaking stuff it shouldn't be leaking. Factor was on top of it but he was in a _world_ of hurt and was going to need a few to get back up on his feet. He couldn't remember the last time he'd hurt like that.
"BLIND!" Cain shouted back, reaching around for anything to clear his eyes with. He felt one booted foot slam down on his fingers, then another bounce off his head and walk across his back as he swore, trying to regain his bearings.
Sven grinned as Harlan set up the folding table over the hard concrete. Reaching down, he grabbed the back of Logan's waistband, heaving him bodily into the air, catching his legs while Harlan leaped to catch his head, both men using the force of their fall to smash Logan through the table like an axe through kindling wood.
Logan grunted, but did not give them the satisfaction of a scream. Whether deliberately or not they'd manage to smash his damaged kidney right into the table, re-rupturing it and undoing all his healing factor's hard work. He managed to stagger up to all four via sheer willpower, and he felt the red haze start to come over his vision. He was dangerously close to losing it all over again.
If that happen, it was even odds someone was takin' the old dirt nap.
Cain heard the crash, and no sound from Logan. Of course, he couldn't hear much over the roar of the crowd and the smell of sweat, dust, and beer.
A-ha!
Kicking a foot up, Cain stumbled forward through the row of tables to the edge of the crowd. He heard screams in front of him as he pressed against the guard rail. Reaching out, he fumbled awkwardly until he felt a smooth plastic cup in his hands. Yanking it away from its owner, he splashed room-temperature beer into his face, wiping and blinking until his vision cleared. He tossed the empty cup into the lap of a terrified fan, giving a quick smile.
"Thanks."
Turning around and taking a running leap, Cain landed behind Logan, wild swipes from his fists keeping the Kleinstocks at bay. "You done getting your ass kicked here, sport?"
Cain's little beer run had given his body time to get the worst of the damage under control for a while. He finished getting to his feet, and then snarled at the Kleinstock twins. "Oh yeah. Time to do a little' kicking of our own." he said, and then leaped forward towards one of the twins. They even _smelled_ alike, for Chrissake.
Sven sidestepped, blur-teleporting to leapfrog his brother - which put him right in the path of Cain's left cross. He staggered back into Harlan, who wound up on the receiving end of a ferocious haymaker from Logan. Both brothers stumbled across the concrete, temporarily blinded by pain and shock.
"Little man is to be cheating with the hard fists, yah?" Sven whined, holding his nose. Harlan nodded, wiping blood from his chin and spitting out a broken tooth.
"Big man to be moving awful fast. Move faster, yah?" Harlan suggested. Clasping arms, the two brothers spun in a circle, Sven releasing Harlan in an irish whip towards Cain and Logan. As he ran, Sven blurred past him, the additional momentum adding to the force of a shoulderblock against Cain.
The Juggernaut, on the other hand, simply had to brace one foot and didn't move a muscle, causing both Kleinstock brothers to smack into each other like billiard balls.
Logan just grinned - his hands were quite bare, thus negating any claim of cheating. Besides, it's not like he could go soften his skeleton just for their amusement. Logan seized the advantage and reached into the Kleinstock pile for a limb of some sort. He got Sven's leg, and then quickly trapped it and started applying pressure to his knee. Pressure in ways that knee was never intended to bend.
Sven wailed, and his brother leaped bodily into the fray. Cain grabbed Harlan by the hair, yanking him back and slamming him into the concrete.
Both brothers howled, Sven trying in vain to resist the leverage Logan was putting on his knee while Harlan attempted to push up against Cain's grip. At the same moment, both Kleinstocks reached out for each other, both trying to teleport to the other's side.
If either Logan or Cain had been an expert in theoretical physics, specifically the aspects of teleportation as applying to solid objects sharing the same physical space, neither would have been surprised by the outcome. As it were, both X-Men were happily ignorant of the science behind the Kleinstocks' next action.
Sven blurred out of Logan's grip, arms outstretched. At the same time, Harlan vanished from under Cain's hand. Both brothers rematerialized a split-second later.
In the exact same space.
The flash of light blinded Cain for a second, but when it cleared...
"Holy God," he murmured, feeling his stomach turn. Where the Kleinstocks now lay, it was nearly impossible to tell where Sven ended and Harlan began. The twins had been somehow... combined into a conjoined mass of overgrown muscle and distorted limbs, two discernible faces grimacing from an oversized, deformed head. The odd gestalt form reached up spastically from the concrete, one ten-fingered hand clutching - then falling slack to the ground.
Logan looked down at the conjoined mess, then over to Cain. "Guess this means we've got the strap?" he said with a wry grin. The mass in mid-ring was in _no_ condition to continue the fight, and if they were lucky they wouldn't live long. He then look back over to Cain and mouthed "More distraction?" at him.
Cain surreptitiously looked at his communicator - no buzzing or flashing yet. "Sucker-punch me," he whispered out the side of his mouth, turning to the crowd to raise his hands as they started to cheer in adulation.
Logan didn't question Cain's request - he just waited for Cain to have both arms up playing to the crowd before savagely rabbit-punching Cain in the kidney. Not just once, but repeatedly. Speed punches. It's not like Cain would feel it much, and the crowd'd eat it up.
Cain dropped to a knee, the world swimming for a moment in shades of red. Had the runt popped the claws on him? He wavered briefly, hearing the crowd gasp, then cheer loudly for the tried-and-true "betrayal by partner" that was part of the show.
His body felt like a lead weight, slow and weak. Lowering his head, Cain coughed, seeing flecks of blood on the concrete. Just like Vladivostok, what the HELL? he thought, the red creeping back from his vision.
As soon as it had come, the wave of pain and weakness was gone. Fighting to keep his wits about him amidst the noise and confusion, Cain shot an elbow back as Logan approached, giving him some room to work. Twirling to face his fellow X-Man, Cain raised an eyebrow. "Let's give 'em a few minutes, runt."
Logan just nodded before roaring in mostly-simulated bloodlust and coming after Cain with everything he had. Logan's advantages against someone like Cain were that he wouldn't _stay_ down and his speed. He was trying to capitalize on both of those, darting in for a crippling blow to a normally-soft area - kidneys, knees, throat, solar plexus, that kind of thing before getting the Hell out of Dodge. If he stood his ground Cain would turn him into thin red paste over an unbreakable skeleton.
Cain let Logan's blows come in at him - the claws were in, why did that kidney punch actually HURT? Even going full-force, most of Logan's punches barely registered to Cain, but he reacted to each of them like a Girl Scout getting hit with a baseball bat.
The crowd ate it up, the little guy having the big man on the ropes. If there was one thing they loved, it was the take-no-prisoners, trust-no-one, king of the mountain mentality of the fight.
Even with Cain's advantage of size, strength, and reach - he couldn't lay a hand on Logan. The little scrapper was good, damn good, Cain thought. He'd heard the brag, of course. Best there was at what he did, and all that.
Right now, he was starting to believe it.
Logan cut loose with a jumping kick to Cain's head, but the flashiness cost him. Cain clipped him with a backfist that rang his chimes but good and brought water to his eyes. Picking himself up off the mat Logan backed off, ducking and weaving as best he could until he got back with the program.
Cain threw a series of jabs to keep Logan at bay, then noticed the number of other fighters who'd come from the back to help drag the Kleinstocks away. And they definitely didn't look happy.
"They wanted a distraction," Cain said quickly, "I think we got one."
"Yeah." Logan agreed, actually breathing somewhat heavily. His body dealt with damage quickly, but he still felt pain. And right now, he was in a lot of it. Another minute or so and he'd be right as rain. "Break for it in five?"
"Sounds like a plan," Cain whispered as he grabbed Logan in a wrestler's clinch loosely, "Throw some more of that jumping Chinaman shit in there, keep everyone's eyes right where we want 'em, and they'll have the kid sprung before anyone's the wiser."
Logan just grinned and then dropped his grip to pull Cain's legs out from under him. If he could - Cain was heavy and while Logan was strong he wasn't sure he was _that_ strong.
Throwing himself backwards, Cain dropped, making it look like Logan had pulled off a feat of superhuman strength. The approaching fighters froze in their tracks, stunned by the maneuver.
At that moment, a loud noise came from the 'backstage' area, and everyone's attention turned to the rotund form of Paul E, breathlessly rushing towards the door.
"It's a raid!" he hollered, and the crowd began to rise from their seats in panic.
Cain looked up at Logan and smiled. "Distraction's over, let's clear a path and go find the kid."
Logan kept his grip on Cain's legs and threw himself backwards, using his unbreakable shins and knees as fulcrum points to get Cain launched and moving.
Launched up onto his feet, Cain smiled at the crowd of now-hostile fighters, who looked eager to start a brawl.
"Been wanting to practice this on some folks," Cain said with a grin. He looked over his shoulder at Logan for a moment. "Cover your ears."
Spreading his hands wide, Cain took a deep breath, cupped his palms, then slammed his hands together as hard as he could. The sound was like a grenade going off in the enclosed warehouse, and the fighters closest to him were actually knocked back a few steps, holding their ears in pain.
Logan, with his enhanced hearing, got both his eardrums blown out and was temporarily deafened. Blood trickling from his ears, he kipped to his feet and then vaulted the ropes to head down into the crowd to cause a little further mayhem.
At that moment, the large roll-up doors at the end of the warehouse were thrown open, lighting the place with the telltale red-and-blue flashes from a number of police cars.
Cain felt his communicator buzz in his pocket and rolled his eyes. "NOW they tell us to bail..." he grumbled, reaching out to grab the back of Logan's shirt. "C'mon, short stack. We're taking the back way out to regroup. Work's done here."
Logan almost threw Cain when he grabbed the back of Logan's shirt, but restrained himself just in time. His hearing was just starting to come back, but he could see the cop lights just fine. Nodding, he followed Cain's crowdbreaking back towards the rear exit.
Cyclops runs into trouble, of a extra-large extra-armed Luchador variety. Still, One Eye defeats Four Arms. Superhero math for the win!
Scott paused in front of the door. Shouting Hey, Kyle, you in there? wasn't precisely feasible, given that they were trying to stay quiet. Speaking of quiet, it was very quiet, behind the door. He eased it open, slipping in.
"No, I'm sorry, but I don't think you're supposed to be here." said a cultured basso profundo voice from inside the room just before the door was smashed down at Scott. Through the open doorway stepped a rippling musclebound figure in a wrestling singlet, knee pads, boots, and a Luchador mask. The difference being that this particular gentleman had four arms, all of them thick with muscle. "So I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
... oh, swell. Scott threw himself to the floor to avoid the door, then rolled and came back to his feet, firing off a half-strength optic blast right at the man's chest.
The man barely even staggered as Scott's blast him him in the chest. "Oho!" he said theatrically, throwing his topmost set of hands to the sky while the bottom-most set stayed clenched in fists and ready to strike. "A fellow freak!" he said conversationally as he advanced. "Are you here to compete?" he asked pleasantly.
"No, just looking for someone. I don't actually want any trouble." Oh, right, Summers. Keep him talking.
The man smiled thinly under his mask, which left his chin and mouth mostly exposed. "Well then, I'm quite sorry to say that trouble has found you." And with that he launched himself into a run, aiming a Size Nineteen Quadruple E bootsole smack at the center of Scott's chest.
Fast, for such a big guy. But still a big guy, and not quite as fast as Scott, who didn't waste any time in Getting Out Of The Way. Another drop and roll brought him back up at just the right angle, and he let the four-armed man have it again, not holding nearly so much back this time.
The big guy wound up on his belly on the floor, Scott's optic blast doing an excellent job of dropping the guy. He climbed back to his feet, hissing in pain. Seems he was favoring his right leg - the one he tried to boot Scott with. But still he advanced towards Scott, all attempts at jocularity forgotten. One hand ripped a fire extinguisher off the wall to be thrown at Scott with questionable accuracy as the other three reached out to get a grip.
Son of a bitch... It wasn't like his optic blast was quiet, either. Scott dodged the fire extinguisher - or almost, as it clipped his arm, spinning him half-around.
The four-armed man had hands like meathooks and a whole lot of power behind them. One fist went for Scott's head, one went for a body-shot, and the third tried to grab a good hold on Scott's leathers.
Scott would later count it an accomplishment that only two out of three actually connected. Unfortunately, though he managed to blast the large fist coming at his head, the second hit had him doubled over and fighting for breath, and the man thus had plenty of time to get a good grip on him.
The man got his former throwing hand on Scott as well, and hoisted him into the air in preparation to administer a truly epic beating. Unfortunately for the masked wrestler, his quadricep, already weakened from age, too many fights, no stretching, and an optic blast chose that particular moment to give way, sending both men crashing to the floor, the larger of them screaming in pain.
Did I do that? I don't think I did that... Scott dragged himself to his feet, trying to catch his breath - ribs, ow, damned Kevlar... - and saw the wrestler writhing on the ground.
The man used one hand to rip his mask off, revealing close-cropped grey hair. "SonofaBITCH!" he whimpered as he tested his leg. "I just came BACK from a bicep tear! I'm getting too old for this shit." he hissed as he tried to drag himself with two of his four arms back to his dressing room.
Scott opened his mouth to apologize - wait, what the hell am I doing? He couldn't let the man get back to the dressing room and sound an alarm, he realized, and shook his head.
"Sorry," he muttered, and blasted him - not too hard, but firmly - in the head.
The no-longer-masked wrestler's head slammed into the floor and that was all it took. He was out like a light.
Scott bent over, wincing, one arm pressed tightly to his side, but then straightened, forcing his game face back on. "~Cyclops here,~" he murmured into his com. "~No Kyle in Green Room 4. Moving on.~"
Shiro also runs into some trouble, although he would have probably preferred Scott's encounter to the one he got.
It was dim and smelly and loud. Really the opposite of where Shiro wanted to be right now. He was in a pissy enough mood to begin with. All the banging and shouts from the fightning pen were giving him a headache. As he rounded a corner, and found himself standing in a corridor lined with locked doors. He swore. He imagined a scene out of Scooby Doo, running into one room and then running out one further down the hall on the other side.
From somewhere further down the hallway, a door opened and closed completely by itself. A nasty little giggle eminented from somewhere in the air. A very nasty little giggle indeed. "Oh man, this is so _cool_..." the squeaky little voice said, before going silent.
Shiro froze, holding a melted padlock in his gloved hand. He'd heard someone speak, but there was no one around. A teleporter, he surmised. "I know you are there," he said, glancing around. "We are both too old for games, aren't we? Show yourself."
No response, but a keen ear might have heard the sound of a shoe-sole squeaking on the linoleum of the floor. Then came another giggle before the first punch landed to Shiro's jaw. "BOO!" said the voice, from somewhere not apparently obvious.
Shiro stumbled back and instinctively fired a plasma blast in the direction he thought the punch must have come from. Maybe not a teleporter, as the only sound he'd heard was a squeak. He rubbed his jaw and grimaced. It was going to bruise.
The voice screamed - a thin, reedy, almost girlish sound - just after Shiro fired. The bolt didn't collect with anything save wall, which was quite happily burning. At least until a fire extinguisher floated out of its hook and sprayed its contents over the plasma fire, choking it of oxygen. "Are you NUTS?" demanded the squeaky voice.
Telekinetic? Shiro flew towards the levitating red canister and kicked below. He grinned when his foot came into contact with what felt like a leg. The mystery opponent was invisible. "I am Sunfire, actually," he replied.
The voice whimpered like a girl and dropped the canister, letting it tumble down the hallway. "HEY!" the voice said, voice going into even higher registers. "I don't care if you're Tojo reborn! You don't beeeeee-long here!" the voice singsonged. Judging by the names on the doors this was a dressing wing or something or the sort. The voice moved as it spoke as an invisible foot snapped out for a very tangible and real groin.
"Okama," Shiro swore, his eyes finally adjusting to the heat signature this fellow emitted. He blocked the kick, grabbing his ankle and throwing him up. He took a step back, focusing on the infrared light and trying to get a clearer picture than just a dim blob of red.
The voice yelped again - and the kicking leg was very, very slender and seemed to be wearing tights - before going oof and rolling. "HEY!" the voice said! "Do you MIND?" The voice went silent then, with only the occasional squeak of sneaker on linoleum giving the voice away. Then came the sound of a zipper being undone and some rustling.
Shiro blinked. He was expecting a street fighter, not an invisible drag queen. "Are you . . . taking off your pants?" he asked. "There is really no need for that."
A laugh greeted that, a very, very highly-pitched laugh. "No, silly!" the voice said, then again came the squeak of sneaker before a cloud of some sort of substance sprayed in the general direction of Shiro's head. The invisibility effect wavered for just a second as the spray came out of the invisible emitter, revealing a very, very slender hand with quick-bitten fingernails holding a can of pepper spray.
"Kuso . . ." Shiro flew back, blinking rapidly. He blasted again, really more of a burst, to dissipate the cloud. "That was cheap, jackass," he said between coughs. But effective. With his eyes teared up, he could barely make out the red blob anymore.
The red blob rolled on the ground and screamed again just after Shiro's wild burst set some of the ceiling tiles on fire. Luckily for everyone the smoke detector two tiles over must have a dead battery in it. But the burst did have the desired goal of dispersing the pepper spray. "STOP DOING THAT!" the voice screamed.
This was getting old. If he wasn't up against a veteran fighter, then he was wasting his time. He could just fly past this idiot, but then he'd probably alert security. And Shiro couldn't see him well enough to just blast him . . . but he obviously could see Shiro. And if he were able to refract visible light so as to become invisible but could still perceive Shiro, then that gave him an open. "Sorry about that. How is this?" Quickly tapping into his reserves, Shiro burst into flames. The intense heat from the fire engulfing his form would have this fellow begging for mercy.
And that's just about what happened. The invisibility effect faded, revealing a young teenage girl clutching a handbag and trying to claw her own eyes out by the looks of it. "Owwwwww..." she groaned, pretty clearly overloaded by Shiro's pyrotechnics. She was wearing battered tennis shoes, tights, a black denim miniskirt, a Type O Negative T-shirt and had her hair buzzed brutally short. The pepper-spray dispenser lay where she'd thrown it in her shock.
Shiro grimaced as he powered down. He'd beat on a girl? Shit. "Oh, for the love of . . . Who the hell are you?"
"My name is Lisa." she said, her eyes finally starting to clear from the infrared overload. "What the _hell_ are you doing here? Looking for a piece of ass?" she asked bitterly.
"Don't flatter yourself," he replied, his tone mirroring hers. And then he paused. He could probably get out of this with minimal violence now. "My friend is lost. I figured it might be foul play, someone taking him out now so he cannot compete later. So I am looking for him."
Lisa shook his head as she pulled herself up to a sitting position. Fishing in her handbag she pulled out a pair of sunglasses and put them on over her abused eyes. "I got _no_ idea what you're talking about." she snapped. Then she thought for a few moments. "Is he cute?"
"Not my type." Shiro shook his head. God how he hates American girls, with one or two exceptions. "Tall, skinny, hairy, pointy ears and teeth? Have you seen him?"
Lisa thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. "Nope. Sorry." she said, unsteadily climbing back to her feet. "Look. You want to put those fires out before the whole place burns down?" she asked archly.
"Not really, no," he said, though he picked up the discarded fire extinguisher and took care of it. "Go on and play, or whatever it is you are supposed to be doing." The team wouldn't let him live this down for weeks to come. As he continued down the hall, he wondered if anyone would notice some minor alterations to his report.
Lisa turned to watch Shiro go, and as soon as he opened the door at the far end of the hall and was out of sight she let a smile cross her lips. "Nice butt." she said, then faded from view.
Sam and Scott find Kyle. Still in Toad's clutches. Toad likes having clutches, he doesn't much like being found. Sam tries to bluff, Toad has a -very- bad day due to optic blasts, and Kyle gets grounded forever. And does NOT get to get his licks in on Toad.
The team had fanned out, the better to search the back area more quickly. The first several rooms revealed nothing, but as Sam approached another, he could hear the meaty thuds of one person hitting another. Moving stealthily, the blond Kentuckian cracked the door far enough to see a familiar form beating and taunting a half-conscious Kyle Gibney.
~Toad has Kyle,~ he subvocalized. ~Green room 3.~ Not waiting for acknowledgement, he stood and kicked the door open, scowling.
Toad? Scott thought disbelieving, leaving the room where he'd left one (significantly substandard) fighter unconscious on the floor and heading in the direction Sam's transmission had indicated.
"Oh-ho," Toad said with a savage sort of cheerfulness, giving Kyle one last kick before turning to Sam. "Should've figured. Here to rescue the kid, are you? So predictable."
Predictable cut both ways, and Sam grinned right back at Toad. "Hey, Storm, y'all might want ta get inside quick. Ah got someone here who's jus' -dyin'- ta renew acquaintances," he spoke in a normal conversational voice. His grin widened at the way Toad's face blanched. ~Flank,~ he subvocalized quickly when Toad's eyes shifted away from his lips, knowing that Cyclops would understand what he meant.
The color returned quickly to Toad's face, and cannily, he leaned over and hauled the half-conscious Kyle up off the floor, holding him up like a human shield. "I think she might want to rethink throwing lightning around," he said smugly. "Wouldn't want to overload the boy's healing factor, would we?"
~One step to your left,~ came Scott's subvocalized reply over the coms, and as Sam moved, ruby light lanced outwards from the door, striking Toad very precisely in the shoulder and spinning him around. The optic blast wasn't strong enough to knock him down. It did however make him drop Kyle.
Thrusting off the foot he planted as he stepped left, Sam darted into the room, low to the ground and just behind Cyclops' optic blast. Grabbing Kyle under the shoulders, he quickly dragged the boy out of Toad's reach and stood up implacably, arms folded across his chest.
It would seem to Kyle, later, that he was always waking up to being in pain, being dragged somewhere, or being in a lot of trouble. This time, it was all three. He cracked the eye that wasn't swollen shut open, and then closed it again with a groan at the sight of Sam towering over him. There was going to be a lecture in his future, at least one, if not a lot of them. He just -knew- it.
Scott raised an eyebrow as Toad straightened. The other mutant got as far as opening his mouth before Scott blasted him again, in this chest this time, and this time, he did knock him down. "No visor anymore," he told Toad coldly, before his gaze flickered sideways to Sam. "How's Kyle?"
Sam cocked his head over his shoulder. Kyle's eyes were closed, but Sam wasn't fooled. "Judgin' by that groan, Ah'd say he's in a world of hurt, but he'll live," he replied. Kyle had definitely gotten himself in a heap of trouble, but nobody deserved to be beaten as hard as Toad had apparently done to Kyle, even considering the healing factor. Turning his head back, he watched Toad struggle to his feet. "So, we playin' Whack-a-Toad? Mind if Ah get a few licks in?" he asked cheekily.
Dammit. They knew he was awake. Ish. Awakeish. It was definitly not all the way awake. And damn Sam and his hearing the groan. Kyle shook his head, trying to throw off the fog from having been pounded in the face with Toad's stinky nasty feet a couple of dozen times, and struggled to sit up. "Me too..." he mumbled.
"Don't be ridiculous," Scott said to Sam, and the temperature in the room dropped several degrees as he looked at Kyle. "And you - settle down and let your healing factor work. We'll get you out of here momentarily." He gave Toad a hard look, debating options. Kyle's safety came first, but there had to be a way... Toad sprang at him, and Scott caught him squarely in the chest with another optic blast. "I can do this all day."
"Ya never let me have any fun," Sam groused. But keeping Kyle out of Toad's way long enough for his healing factor to work was important to. Sam chuckled as Toad struggled to his feet again, taking longer than the time before. As the other mutant darted a look at him, Sam ignited his blast field where he stood. "Y'all really think you're gonna get it any easier from me?" he asked mockingly.
"'m fine to kick him in the face coupla times..." Kyle protested weakly. "Ass deserves it.." He growled low in his chest, and tried to stand up. Toad was down and he wanted revenge. Cheap revenge was still -revenge- and the more Kyle thought about hurting Toad a bit, the less he thought kicking a man when he was down was wrong. The fucker had broken his -jaw- and left him in pain all night. He deserved pain in return.
"Take Kyle out of here," Scott said very precisely to Sam, still eyeing Toad. Knock him out, place a quick call to the authorities? Could work. "I'll follow shortly."
Shaking his head as Kyle tried to stand up and failed, Sam ducked down to lift the boy into a fireman's carry over his voluble protests. "Y'all ain't in any condition ta be kickin' anythin'," he admonished Kyle. "'Sides, y'all are in enough trouble as it is, could might be ya should just not try an' get yourself in any deeper?" Straightening, he grunted at the weight distributed on his shoulders as he moved for the door.
Kyle muttered in resignation. He was going to be grounded forever. And possibly longer than that. They'd get Forge to build a time machine, send him back a year, and ground him from -then-. "Still think I should get to bite the fuckface's feet off. Or at least break an arm... or jaw." His jaw had healed, at least enough so he could talk. "Or knock out a coule of teeth. Or rip off his bffgfmmdfdg..." Despite Sam clamping a firm hand over Kyle's mouth, a stream of what had to be muffled profanity continued for a few more seconds before he rolled his eyes and finally ceased trying to be heard.
Scott made the mistake of looking in Sam and Kyle's direction to make sure that Sam had a good grip on the boy and Kyle wasn't about to come running over and put any of those threats into action. It was definitely a mistake, because Toad seized the opportunity. Springing up off the floor, Toad did a flip in mid-air, his feet slamming into Scott's chest and knocking him to the ground - incidentally, clearing himself a path to the door.
Sam let out a 'yipe' in surprise as Toad bounded past him. By the time he managed to set Kyle gently down, Toad had bounded down the hall and around the corner. There was no way Sam was going to catch him without using his blast field, and that was out of the question indoors. Youra had been a matter of survival, and blasting through walls was incidental. Property damage here would probably be a fantastically bad idea. Instead, he walked over to where Scott was clutching at his chest where Toad had landed. "Ya all right?" he asked solicitously.
"... oh, fine," Scott wheezed, but set his jaw and hauled himself up off the floor. Sure. Take your eyes off the member of the Brotherhood. Great survival strategy. "Pick Kyle up," Scott gritted, one hand pressed to his side, "and let's get out of here. And you," he said, as Kyle looked up at them, "are grounded until the end of the world."
The back entrance to the fighting arena was an abandoned loading dock, with a door that had obviously seen better days. It looked heavily rusted, and wouldn't budge to the heaving attempts of any of the three X-Men standing in front of it. Sam grimaced, then chuckled wryly. "So, draw straws to blow this thing down?" he drawled, assessing his teammates, since any of the three could have easily dealt with a rusted-shut door. "'Cept, really, it probably shouldn't be me. Ah make too much of a racket, an' the idea is to be at least a -little-bit subtle, right?"
"Let me try," Scott said, moving forward and remembering what he'd done to Hodge's door in Oregon. A little more tricky, when it was rust rather than a lock, but if he kept the beam fine enough... Narrowing his eye, he knelt down. "This shouldn't be too noisy," he said, keeping his voice low. "Might take me a few minutes, though."
Shiro's right hand lit up with golden flames. "Would you like some help?" he asked. He'd spent enough time with Haroun and the Blackbird to have learned to become a human plasma torch. He placed his hand on the door, concentrating and focusing the plasma to melt through the metal as he slowly traced his fingers over the rust.
Scott flinched, but the beam slicing through the rust, though it stuttered for a moment, came right back on, steady. "Sunfire, don't sneak up on my blind side like that," he murmured, focusing on what he was doing. The prosthesis had pinged him on the younger X-Man's approach, and rather harshly.
Sam merely stepped back and kept watch for anyone coming into the loading area, as his power would have instantly given away that people were there. Scott and Shiro were much quieter in the use of their powers.
"There," Scott murmured, gesturing at Shiro to step back. He pulled the door open slowly, relieved at the minimal amount of noise. Hopefully most people in the warehouse would be on the other side, where the 'show' was going on. That was the whole point of sneaking in the back in the first place. And yet... "Kylun, take point," he said quietly, after a moment's thought. If anyone did see them, they needed to be taken down as quickly and as quietly as possible. "We can't afford to be noticed just yet."
Kylun nodded silently and slipped through the door, low and alert, his feet making no noise on the loading dock's concrete floor. He saw a door at the far end, slightly ajar, the knob dangling broken, and angled toward it, looking for a vantage from which he could see as much as could be seen through the crack.
And the door cracked open further, to reveal a large going-to-seed man, in sweatpants and a tank top. "Hey! Hey-hey-hey! You guys can't be back here! You wanna try out or something, you gotta go talk to Vinnie." Christ, the fighters were getting weirder and weirder. First, Faber and his wacky colored hair and then some guy who -thought- he was a mutie but really wasn't and his green hair and stupid mask, and now these guys. Geez, and one of 'em had fur and everything.
Kylun curled his lip--half at the man's oily voice, half at himself for being seen when he hadn't meant to be. "We are not here for your 'tryouts,'" he said coldly--and even before the words were out of his mouth he was moving, a quick eye-fake drawing the oily man's hands up a bare instant before he folded around Kylun's knee.
"Our best hope now may be speed," he informed the others as he dragged the gasping thug back into the loading dock. "Especially if this one is expected somewhere soon."
"Why do my plans always last five minutes?" Scott muttered, shaking his head. And they were usually such good plans, too. "Let's get going, then. Room to room search, as quickly as we can. We want to find Kyle and get out of here without attracting any more attention, if at all possible..."
Sam shrugged. "Ya haven't come ta expect it with us? Besides, you're the one always quoting about how no plan survives contact with the enemy. It's just that none of your plans survive contact with the team," he joked, darting after Kylun's silent form.
While Cannonball, Sunfire, Kylun and Cyclops look for Kyle, The Juggernaut and The Wolverine provide... a distraction, capitalize on their reputations, and much to their disappointment, are a tag-team.
Cain Marko cracked his knuckles, trying to resist the urge to shove his fist down the throat of the weaselly booker sitting across the desk. The noise of the crowd in the converted warehouse behind them drowned out the popping as he clenched his fists and leaned forward.
"I'm telling you, you got folks that'll want to see this. That runt over there's the goddamn Wolverine - name ring a bell?" He jerked a thumb at Logan, who hadn't moved from his spot leaning against the doorframe.
"And you're the Juggernaut?" The booker's face was impassive behind thick glasses. "As in the urban legend, mountain that walks, seen less than Bigfoot? Hey! Maybe that'll be a great match!" he said sarcastically. "Tell you what, you bring me Bigfoot, and I'll get you a match!"
Logan lit his cigar with a practiced flick of his lighter. "It's real simple. Can't get you bigfoot, but we can set you up a brawl the likes of which you ain't ever seen." he said. "You'll sell millions. The big guy here? Hoists boxcars for a workout and never gasses out. Me? I don't break, don't quit, and don't go down. It's a sure thing."
"And you two want to fight each other, in that octagon, just like that?" The booker narrowed his eyes, then checked a sheet in front of him. Picking up his cell phone, he hit a speed-dial button. "Yeah, Johnny? Those two kids from Philly shown up yet? No? Tell them they ain't getting paid, they're bumped. Right. Got something else to surprise the folks. Yeah. Call Eric, tell him the Kleinstocks are on in five."
Setting the phone down, he pulled two sheets of paper out and slid them across the desk. "Sign the waivers. You two are in. I don't give a damn if you are who you say you are, this absolves us of any responsibility if you break your neck out there. Hurry it up, they're taking the octagon apart for your match."
Cain looked over Logan's head to where the crowd was moving back, the plexiglass walls of the enclosed octagon being replaced with folding wooden tables and various objects - ladders, garbage cans, axe handles?
The bookie smiled and held out the waivers. "The only rule is that there are no rules, gentleman. Beat them if you can. Survive if they let you."
Logan glanced at the paperwork and scrawled his signature down at the bottom. He didn't care if he got paid, and it wasn't like he _could_ get seriously hurt by anything that could happen in the ring there. "No rules, eh?" he said with an evil chuckle. "And how serious of a beating are we talking? KO or what?"
"You go until someone calls it quits or can't answer a ten count," the booker said, pointing towards the doorway. "You wouldn't be here if you didn't know what was in store. This is a fight, not an artillery range. Last team standing wins. Get out there."
Cain stepped through the door, then paused. "Wait, TEAM? We're a team?"
Logan stopped and blinked. "Wait. This was supposed to be me versus the big lug here. Now yer tellin' me we're a team?" he said, a hair's breath after Cain stopped talking. He then looked Cain - sizing him up, calculating.
"You want to fight, get moving," the booker said coldly. One by one, the audience was beginning to turn and look to where Cain and Logan were standing. Even among the mostly-mutant fighters, someone standing over seven feet tall attracted a bit of attention.
"Fuck it, we improvise," Cain grumbled quietly to Logan, stalking down the aisle toward the makeshift battleground that was set up.
"Piece of cake. We'll be home in time for cold ones at Harry's." he said, cracking his knuckles with a series of metallic *pops*. "You ever done this before?" he asked, not taking his eyes off the ring for a second.
Cain looked down at Logan, his first reply drowned out by the commentator announcing their arrival in an impromptu no-holds-barred partners match, to the crowd's chorus of mixed cheers and boos. In a break of silence, he simply shrugged.
"I ain't a stranger to scraps. They say distraction, I figure we give them one hell of a distraction."
Logan shrugged in return. "Think you can make it look good?" he asked, just before they got to ringside. "Give Bravo Team time to get their shit done and exfiltrate."
"Think you can remember which fucking side you're on?" Cain shot back before the crowd erupted into applause.
"Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the only two-man undefeated fighting tandem of the last seven years, accompanied by their brother Eric, I give you Sven and Harlan, the Kleinstock Brothers!"
The two men that lumbered in lockstep towards the arena floor were maybe one or two generations removed from Cro-Magnon, from the looks of them. Twins, each over six and a half feet tall and easily as broad as Cain. Their brother, looking for all the world like a half-size version of Sven and Harlan, followed beside them, megaphone in one hand, clipboard in the other, shouting incomprehensible encouragement to his siblings.
Cain looked over at Logan, a mixture of amusement and confusion crossing his face. "Brothers?" he said with a smirk.
Logan just rolled his eyes. "Great." he said. "You want first shot at 'em?" he asked, rolling his neck to another chorus of metallic cracking sounds. "No sign of obvious augment. Figure strong and tough?" he asked.
"Let's see how tough," Cain answered, stepping forward as soon as one of the two - Sven, according to the tattoo across his throat - entered the circle.
Without any warning, Cain shot a jab at the other fighter's face. Not even bothering to go at full strength, no telling if this guy would be able to take the impact without punching his jaw through the back of his skull.
That is, if the blow had connected.
In a blur of semi-transparent afterimages, Sven seemed to blink out of existence, appearing at Harlan's side. In the same motion, Harlan blurred forward, appearing in Sven's place as Cain's punch passed, expertly tripping him face-down onto the concrete.
"Point to us, yah?" Harlan laughed, giving the thumbs-up to his brother. He then turned to look at Logan, giving the thumbs-down and a sneer. "Show us what you are having, little man, yah?"
Logan just quirked an eyebrow and advanced slowly. Since he didn't know what he was dealing with, he had to be absolutely sure to land anything he was going to land lest the brothers do that blurry crap again. Up on the balls of his feet, cranked up, out on the pointy end, and ready to rock. He advanced on Harlan with a slight grin on his face, waiting for the big man to make his move.
Harlan stepped forward, wild punch sailing right over Logan's head. Exactly as intended. As Logan ducked, Harlan blurred backwards, replaced by Sven in mid-knee strike, catching Logan in the ribs. Nothing to damage, just a fighter's cocky declaration of "I'm here, what've you got?"
What Logan had, besides adamantium ribs, was a fist to Sven's midsection. A full-strength I'm-not-playing-with-you strike intended to break bone, paralyze a solar plexus, or just generally mess someone up.
Sven's momentum worked in his favor, as he rose up on his toes with Logan's blow, letting the force carry him over the shorter man's head rather than cause serious damage. Rolling into a crouch, he spat out a small bit of blood onto the concrete, earning a gasp from the crowd.
"Hits hard, yah?" he called over to Harlan. "Tough little scrappah."
Cain lifted his head from where he'd tumbled on the concrete, seeing the smaller Kleinstock, Eric, crouching in his face. "Not to be taking chances, big man," the dwarf laughed, moving his hand to his waistband, then towards Cain's face in a snapping motion.
"Fuck!" Cain yelped. Whatever that stuff was, it burned like rock salt. Flailing about, he rose to a knee, pawing at his eyes. "I can't fucking see, Logan!"
"BUSY!" Logan roared, going after Sven - or was it Harlan? Anyway, one of the Kleinstocks was here in the ring, and he needed to go down. Permanent-like. He kept the claws in but he let the beast out. Roaring, he snapped in hard, launching a scything kick to the much bigger man's knee. He wasn't too worried about anything the guy could dish out, but he kept a close eye out for that blurry teleportation crap.
Before the kick could land, Harlan was in front of his brother, and only Logan's preternatural reflexes kept him from falling prey to a nasty counterstrike.
"Dontcha be hitting my brother twice, yah?" the dark-haired goliath singsonged, splitting up with his twin to circle Logan. "We do the hitting twice, hey?"
Logan avoided a high-low kick combo from the twins, backing up into Cain, who luckily swung over the shorter man's head, connecting with Harlan's temple. "Who'd I hit?" he bellowed, still trying to scrape the powder from his eyes.
"THEM! Swing _harder_!" Logan cried, stepping out into his own quick one-two-three-four combo aimed for head, head, throat, and solar plexus, respectively. Logan had excellent handspeed and was using _all_ of it. These guys looked like they could take a beating or two, and Logan was just itching to give it to them.
The advantage of being teleporters was that the twins could easily trade places to soak up the impact of blows, effectively halving Logan's offensive flurry. However, even halved, Wolverine was twice the fighter of any man in the room, and the Kleinstocks found themselves on the defensive.
Cain's vision slowly resolved from a series of dark blurs into light blurs. Figuring the smallest to be Logan, he slowly moved forward. "How far away are-" A smash at the back of his skull cut him off, letting him know one of the Kleinstocks had grabbed a folding chair from the crowd and decided to up the ante a bit. Lashing out, Cain's fist met only empty air, then two more strikes hit the back of his knees, and he reflexively dropped to a crouch.
"Still fucking blind, man!" he hollered. "Buy me time!"
"Working on it!" he said, and kept up the flurry. Sure, they could soak the hits, but all that meant is that he'd have to throw twice the moves. Finally, one of the Kleinstocks made a tactical mistake. They threw a punch at Logan when he was ready for it. Logan met the punch fist-to-fist, splaying the man's hand like so much devilled ham against his unbreakable bones. The *CRUNCH* had to have been audible into the first four rows.
"Mother of the fuckers!" Harlan crowed, blurring backwards to Eric's side, letting his smaller brother look at his hand. The crowd ate it up, cheering with restrained bloodlust.
Sven narrowed his eyes. "Short bastard gotta pay, you betcha." Curling his legs, he leaped into the air, reaching an apex, then vanishing -reappearing behind Logan with the force of momentum, hitting a kidney shot that sent the shorter X-Men prone.
"Harlan!" he shouted, hearing the echo from the crowd, "get the tables!"
"CAIN!" Logan shouted - or at least tried to. Fucker caught him at just the wrong - right? - angle with that rabbit kick. Something inside ruptured and was leaking stuff it shouldn't be leaking. Factor was on top of it but he was in a _world_ of hurt and was going to need a few to get back up on his feet. He couldn't remember the last time he'd hurt like that.
"BLIND!" Cain shouted back, reaching around for anything to clear his eyes with. He felt one booted foot slam down on his fingers, then another bounce off his head and walk across his back as he swore, trying to regain his bearings.
Sven grinned as Harlan set up the folding table over the hard concrete. Reaching down, he grabbed the back of Logan's waistband, heaving him bodily into the air, catching his legs while Harlan leaped to catch his head, both men using the force of their fall to smash Logan through the table like an axe through kindling wood.
Logan grunted, but did not give them the satisfaction of a scream. Whether deliberately or not they'd manage to smash his damaged kidney right into the table, re-rupturing it and undoing all his healing factor's hard work. He managed to stagger up to all four via sheer willpower, and he felt the red haze start to come over his vision. He was dangerously close to losing it all over again.
If that happen, it was even odds someone was takin' the old dirt nap.
Cain heard the crash, and no sound from Logan. Of course, he couldn't hear much over the roar of the crowd and the smell of sweat, dust, and beer.
A-ha!
Kicking a foot up, Cain stumbled forward through the row of tables to the edge of the crowd. He heard screams in front of him as he pressed against the guard rail. Reaching out, he fumbled awkwardly until he felt a smooth plastic cup in his hands. Yanking it away from its owner, he splashed room-temperature beer into his face, wiping and blinking until his vision cleared. He tossed the empty cup into the lap of a terrified fan, giving a quick smile.
"Thanks."
Turning around and taking a running leap, Cain landed behind Logan, wild swipes from his fists keeping the Kleinstocks at bay. "You done getting your ass kicked here, sport?"
Cain's little beer run had given his body time to get the worst of the damage under control for a while. He finished getting to his feet, and then snarled at the Kleinstock twins. "Oh yeah. Time to do a little' kicking of our own." he said, and then leaped forward towards one of the twins. They even _smelled_ alike, for Chrissake.
Sven sidestepped, blur-teleporting to leapfrog his brother - which put him right in the path of Cain's left cross. He staggered back into Harlan, who wound up on the receiving end of a ferocious haymaker from Logan. Both brothers stumbled across the concrete, temporarily blinded by pain and shock.
"Little man is to be cheating with the hard fists, yah?" Sven whined, holding his nose. Harlan nodded, wiping blood from his chin and spitting out a broken tooth.
"Big man to be moving awful fast. Move faster, yah?" Harlan suggested. Clasping arms, the two brothers spun in a circle, Sven releasing Harlan in an irish whip towards Cain and Logan. As he ran, Sven blurred past him, the additional momentum adding to the force of a shoulderblock against Cain.
The Juggernaut, on the other hand, simply had to brace one foot and didn't move a muscle, causing both Kleinstock brothers to smack into each other like billiard balls.
Logan just grinned - his hands were quite bare, thus negating any claim of cheating. Besides, it's not like he could go soften his skeleton just for their amusement. Logan seized the advantage and reached into the Kleinstock pile for a limb of some sort. He got Sven's leg, and then quickly trapped it and started applying pressure to his knee. Pressure in ways that knee was never intended to bend.
Sven wailed, and his brother leaped bodily into the fray. Cain grabbed Harlan by the hair, yanking him back and slamming him into the concrete.
Both brothers howled, Sven trying in vain to resist the leverage Logan was putting on his knee while Harlan attempted to push up against Cain's grip. At the same moment, both Kleinstocks reached out for each other, both trying to teleport to the other's side.
If either Logan or Cain had been an expert in theoretical physics, specifically the aspects of teleportation as applying to solid objects sharing the same physical space, neither would have been surprised by the outcome. As it were, both X-Men were happily ignorant of the science behind the Kleinstocks' next action.
Sven blurred out of Logan's grip, arms outstretched. At the same time, Harlan vanished from under Cain's hand. Both brothers rematerialized a split-second later.
In the exact same space.
The flash of light blinded Cain for a second, but when it cleared...
"Holy God," he murmured, feeling his stomach turn. Where the Kleinstocks now lay, it was nearly impossible to tell where Sven ended and Harlan began. The twins had been somehow... combined into a conjoined mass of overgrown muscle and distorted limbs, two discernible faces grimacing from an oversized, deformed head. The odd gestalt form reached up spastically from the concrete, one ten-fingered hand clutching - then falling slack to the ground.
Logan looked down at the conjoined mess, then over to Cain. "Guess this means we've got the strap?" he said with a wry grin. The mass in mid-ring was in _no_ condition to continue the fight, and if they were lucky they wouldn't live long. He then look back over to Cain and mouthed "More distraction?" at him.
Cain surreptitiously looked at his communicator - no buzzing or flashing yet. "Sucker-punch me," he whispered out the side of his mouth, turning to the crowd to raise his hands as they started to cheer in adulation.
Logan didn't question Cain's request - he just waited for Cain to have both arms up playing to the crowd before savagely rabbit-punching Cain in the kidney. Not just once, but repeatedly. Speed punches. It's not like Cain would feel it much, and the crowd'd eat it up.
Cain dropped to a knee, the world swimming for a moment in shades of red. Had the runt popped the claws on him? He wavered briefly, hearing the crowd gasp, then cheer loudly for the tried-and-true "betrayal by partner" that was part of the show.
His body felt like a lead weight, slow and weak. Lowering his head, Cain coughed, seeing flecks of blood on the concrete. Just like Vladivostok, what the HELL? he thought, the red creeping back from his vision.
As soon as it had come, the wave of pain and weakness was gone. Fighting to keep his wits about him amidst the noise and confusion, Cain shot an elbow back as Logan approached, giving him some room to work. Twirling to face his fellow X-Man, Cain raised an eyebrow. "Let's give 'em a few minutes, runt."
Logan just nodded before roaring in mostly-simulated bloodlust and coming after Cain with everything he had. Logan's advantages against someone like Cain were that he wouldn't _stay_ down and his speed. He was trying to capitalize on both of those, darting in for a crippling blow to a normally-soft area - kidneys, knees, throat, solar plexus, that kind of thing before getting the Hell out of Dodge. If he stood his ground Cain would turn him into thin red paste over an unbreakable skeleton.
Cain let Logan's blows come in at him - the claws were in, why did that kidney punch actually HURT? Even going full-force, most of Logan's punches barely registered to Cain, but he reacted to each of them like a Girl Scout getting hit with a baseball bat.
The crowd ate it up, the little guy having the big man on the ropes. If there was one thing they loved, it was the take-no-prisoners, trust-no-one, king of the mountain mentality of the fight.
Even with Cain's advantage of size, strength, and reach - he couldn't lay a hand on Logan. The little scrapper was good, damn good, Cain thought. He'd heard the brag, of course. Best there was at what he did, and all that.
Right now, he was starting to believe it.
Logan cut loose with a jumping kick to Cain's head, but the flashiness cost him. Cain clipped him with a backfist that rang his chimes but good and brought water to his eyes. Picking himself up off the mat Logan backed off, ducking and weaving as best he could until he got back with the program.
Cain threw a series of jabs to keep Logan at bay, then noticed the number of other fighters who'd come from the back to help drag the Kleinstocks away. And they definitely didn't look happy.
"They wanted a distraction," Cain said quickly, "I think we got one."
"Yeah." Logan agreed, actually breathing somewhat heavily. His body dealt with damage quickly, but he still felt pain. And right now, he was in a lot of it. Another minute or so and he'd be right as rain. "Break for it in five?"
"Sounds like a plan," Cain whispered as he grabbed Logan in a wrestler's clinch loosely, "Throw some more of that jumping Chinaman shit in there, keep everyone's eyes right where we want 'em, and they'll have the kid sprung before anyone's the wiser."
Logan just grinned and then dropped his grip to pull Cain's legs out from under him. If he could - Cain was heavy and while Logan was strong he wasn't sure he was _that_ strong.
Throwing himself backwards, Cain dropped, making it look like Logan had pulled off a feat of superhuman strength. The approaching fighters froze in their tracks, stunned by the maneuver.
At that moment, a loud noise came from the 'backstage' area, and everyone's attention turned to the rotund form of Paul E, breathlessly rushing towards the door.
"It's a raid!" he hollered, and the crowd began to rise from their seats in panic.
Cain looked up at Logan and smiled. "Distraction's over, let's clear a path and go find the kid."
Logan kept his grip on Cain's legs and threw himself backwards, using his unbreakable shins and knees as fulcrum points to get Cain launched and moving.
Launched up onto his feet, Cain smiled at the crowd of now-hostile fighters, who looked eager to start a brawl.
"Been wanting to practice this on some folks," Cain said with a grin. He looked over his shoulder at Logan for a moment. "Cover your ears."
Spreading his hands wide, Cain took a deep breath, cupped his palms, then slammed his hands together as hard as he could. The sound was like a grenade going off in the enclosed warehouse, and the fighters closest to him were actually knocked back a few steps, holding their ears in pain.
Logan, with his enhanced hearing, got both his eardrums blown out and was temporarily deafened. Blood trickling from his ears, he kipped to his feet and then vaulted the ropes to head down into the crowd to cause a little further mayhem.
At that moment, the large roll-up doors at the end of the warehouse were thrown open, lighting the place with the telltale red-and-blue flashes from a number of police cars.
Cain felt his communicator buzz in his pocket and rolled his eyes. "NOW they tell us to bail..." he grumbled, reaching out to grab the back of Logan's shirt. "C'mon, short stack. We're taking the back way out to regroup. Work's done here."
Logan almost threw Cain when he grabbed the back of Logan's shirt, but restrained himself just in time. His hearing was just starting to come back, but he could see the cop lights just fine. Nodding, he followed Cain's crowdbreaking back towards the rear exit.
Cyclops runs into trouble, of a extra-large extra-armed Luchador variety. Still, One Eye defeats Four Arms. Superhero math for the win!
Scott paused in front of the door. Shouting Hey, Kyle, you in there? wasn't precisely feasible, given that they were trying to stay quiet. Speaking of quiet, it was very quiet, behind the door. He eased it open, slipping in.
"No, I'm sorry, but I don't think you're supposed to be here." said a cultured basso profundo voice from inside the room just before the door was smashed down at Scott. Through the open doorway stepped a rippling musclebound figure in a wrestling singlet, knee pads, boots, and a Luchador mask. The difference being that this particular gentleman had four arms, all of them thick with muscle. "So I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
... oh, swell. Scott threw himself to the floor to avoid the door, then rolled and came back to his feet, firing off a half-strength optic blast right at the man's chest.
The man barely even staggered as Scott's blast him him in the chest. "Oho!" he said theatrically, throwing his topmost set of hands to the sky while the bottom-most set stayed clenched in fists and ready to strike. "A fellow freak!" he said conversationally as he advanced. "Are you here to compete?" he asked pleasantly.
"No, just looking for someone. I don't actually want any trouble." Oh, right, Summers. Keep him talking.
The man smiled thinly under his mask, which left his chin and mouth mostly exposed. "Well then, I'm quite sorry to say that trouble has found you." And with that he launched himself into a run, aiming a Size Nineteen Quadruple E bootsole smack at the center of Scott's chest.
Fast, for such a big guy. But still a big guy, and not quite as fast as Scott, who didn't waste any time in Getting Out Of The Way. Another drop and roll brought him back up at just the right angle, and he let the four-armed man have it again, not holding nearly so much back this time.
The big guy wound up on his belly on the floor, Scott's optic blast doing an excellent job of dropping the guy. He climbed back to his feet, hissing in pain. Seems he was favoring his right leg - the one he tried to boot Scott with. But still he advanced towards Scott, all attempts at jocularity forgotten. One hand ripped a fire extinguisher off the wall to be thrown at Scott with questionable accuracy as the other three reached out to get a grip.
Son of a bitch... It wasn't like his optic blast was quiet, either. Scott dodged the fire extinguisher - or almost, as it clipped his arm, spinning him half-around.
The four-armed man had hands like meathooks and a whole lot of power behind them. One fist went for Scott's head, one went for a body-shot, and the third tried to grab a good hold on Scott's leathers.
Scott would later count it an accomplishment that only two out of three actually connected. Unfortunately, though he managed to blast the large fist coming at his head, the second hit had him doubled over and fighting for breath, and the man thus had plenty of time to get a good grip on him.
The man got his former throwing hand on Scott as well, and hoisted him into the air in preparation to administer a truly epic beating. Unfortunately for the masked wrestler, his quadricep, already weakened from age, too many fights, no stretching, and an optic blast chose that particular moment to give way, sending both men crashing to the floor, the larger of them screaming in pain.
Did I do that? I don't think I did that... Scott dragged himself to his feet, trying to catch his breath - ribs, ow, damned Kevlar... - and saw the wrestler writhing on the ground.
The man used one hand to rip his mask off, revealing close-cropped grey hair. "SonofaBITCH!" he whimpered as he tested his leg. "I just came BACK from a bicep tear! I'm getting too old for this shit." he hissed as he tried to drag himself with two of his four arms back to his dressing room.
Scott opened his mouth to apologize - wait, what the hell am I doing? He couldn't let the man get back to the dressing room and sound an alarm, he realized, and shook his head.
"Sorry," he muttered, and blasted him - not too hard, but firmly - in the head.
The no-longer-masked wrestler's head slammed into the floor and that was all it took. He was out like a light.
Scott bent over, wincing, one arm pressed tightly to his side, but then straightened, forcing his game face back on. "~Cyclops here,~" he murmured into his com. "~No Kyle in Green Room 4. Moving on.~"
Shiro also runs into some trouble, although he would have probably preferred Scott's encounter to the one he got.
It was dim and smelly and loud. Really the opposite of where Shiro wanted to be right now. He was in a pissy enough mood to begin with. All the banging and shouts from the fightning pen were giving him a headache. As he rounded a corner, and found himself standing in a corridor lined with locked doors. He swore. He imagined a scene out of Scooby Doo, running into one room and then running out one further down the hall on the other side.
From somewhere further down the hallway, a door opened and closed completely by itself. A nasty little giggle eminented from somewhere in the air. A very nasty little giggle indeed. "Oh man, this is so _cool_..." the squeaky little voice said, before going silent.
Shiro froze, holding a melted padlock in his gloved hand. He'd heard someone speak, but there was no one around. A teleporter, he surmised. "I know you are there," he said, glancing around. "We are both too old for games, aren't we? Show yourself."
No response, but a keen ear might have heard the sound of a shoe-sole squeaking on the linoleum of the floor. Then came another giggle before the first punch landed to Shiro's jaw. "BOO!" said the voice, from somewhere not apparently obvious.
Shiro stumbled back and instinctively fired a plasma blast in the direction he thought the punch must have come from. Maybe not a teleporter, as the only sound he'd heard was a squeak. He rubbed his jaw and grimaced. It was going to bruise.
The voice screamed - a thin, reedy, almost girlish sound - just after Shiro fired. The bolt didn't collect with anything save wall, which was quite happily burning. At least until a fire extinguisher floated out of its hook and sprayed its contents over the plasma fire, choking it of oxygen. "Are you NUTS?" demanded the squeaky voice.
Telekinetic? Shiro flew towards the levitating red canister and kicked below. He grinned when his foot came into contact with what felt like a leg. The mystery opponent was invisible. "I am Sunfire, actually," he replied.
The voice whimpered like a girl and dropped the canister, letting it tumble down the hallway. "HEY!" the voice said, voice going into even higher registers. "I don't care if you're Tojo reborn! You don't beeeeee-long here!" the voice singsonged. Judging by the names on the doors this was a dressing wing or something or the sort. The voice moved as it spoke as an invisible foot snapped out for a very tangible and real groin.
"Okama," Shiro swore, his eyes finally adjusting to the heat signature this fellow emitted. He blocked the kick, grabbing his ankle and throwing him up. He took a step back, focusing on the infrared light and trying to get a clearer picture than just a dim blob of red.
The voice yelped again - and the kicking leg was very, very slender and seemed to be wearing tights - before going oof and rolling. "HEY!" the voice said! "Do you MIND?" The voice went silent then, with only the occasional squeak of sneaker on linoleum giving the voice away. Then came the sound of a zipper being undone and some rustling.
Shiro blinked. He was expecting a street fighter, not an invisible drag queen. "Are you . . . taking off your pants?" he asked. "There is really no need for that."
A laugh greeted that, a very, very highly-pitched laugh. "No, silly!" the voice said, then again came the squeak of sneaker before a cloud of some sort of substance sprayed in the general direction of Shiro's head. The invisibility effect wavered for just a second as the spray came out of the invisible emitter, revealing a very, very slender hand with quick-bitten fingernails holding a can of pepper spray.
"Kuso . . ." Shiro flew back, blinking rapidly. He blasted again, really more of a burst, to dissipate the cloud. "That was cheap, jackass," he said between coughs. But effective. With his eyes teared up, he could barely make out the red blob anymore.
The red blob rolled on the ground and screamed again just after Shiro's wild burst set some of the ceiling tiles on fire. Luckily for everyone the smoke detector two tiles over must have a dead battery in it. But the burst did have the desired goal of dispersing the pepper spray. "STOP DOING THAT!" the voice screamed.
This was getting old. If he wasn't up against a veteran fighter, then he was wasting his time. He could just fly past this idiot, but then he'd probably alert security. And Shiro couldn't see him well enough to just blast him . . . but he obviously could see Shiro. And if he were able to refract visible light so as to become invisible but could still perceive Shiro, then that gave him an open. "Sorry about that. How is this?" Quickly tapping into his reserves, Shiro burst into flames. The intense heat from the fire engulfing his form would have this fellow begging for mercy.
And that's just about what happened. The invisibility effect faded, revealing a young teenage girl clutching a handbag and trying to claw her own eyes out by the looks of it. "Owwwwww..." she groaned, pretty clearly overloaded by Shiro's pyrotechnics. She was wearing battered tennis shoes, tights, a black denim miniskirt, a Type O Negative T-shirt and had her hair buzzed brutally short. The pepper-spray dispenser lay where she'd thrown it in her shock.
Shiro grimaced as he powered down. He'd beat on a girl? Shit. "Oh, for the love of . . . Who the hell are you?"
"My name is Lisa." she said, her eyes finally starting to clear from the infrared overload. "What the _hell_ are you doing here? Looking for a piece of ass?" she asked bitterly.
"Don't flatter yourself," he replied, his tone mirroring hers. And then he paused. He could probably get out of this with minimal violence now. "My friend is lost. I figured it might be foul play, someone taking him out now so he cannot compete later. So I am looking for him."
Lisa shook his head as she pulled herself up to a sitting position. Fishing in her handbag she pulled out a pair of sunglasses and put them on over her abused eyes. "I got _no_ idea what you're talking about." she snapped. Then she thought for a few moments. "Is he cute?"
"Not my type." Shiro shook his head. God how he hates American girls, with one or two exceptions. "Tall, skinny, hairy, pointy ears and teeth? Have you seen him?"
Lisa thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. "Nope. Sorry." she said, unsteadily climbing back to her feet. "Look. You want to put those fires out before the whole place burns down?" she asked archly.
"Not really, no," he said, though he picked up the discarded fire extinguisher and took care of it. "Go on and play, or whatever it is you are supposed to be doing." The team wouldn't let him live this down for weeks to come. As he continued down the hall, he wondered if anyone would notice some minor alterations to his report.
Lisa turned to watch Shiro go, and as soon as he opened the door at the far end of the hall and was out of sight she let a smile cross her lips. "Nice butt." she said, then faded from view.
Sam and Scott find Kyle. Still in Toad's clutches. Toad likes having clutches, he doesn't much like being found. Sam tries to bluff, Toad has a -very- bad day due to optic blasts, and Kyle gets grounded forever. And does NOT get to get his licks in on Toad.
The team had fanned out, the better to search the back area more quickly. The first several rooms revealed nothing, but as Sam approached another, he could hear the meaty thuds of one person hitting another. Moving stealthily, the blond Kentuckian cracked the door far enough to see a familiar form beating and taunting a half-conscious Kyle Gibney.
~Toad has Kyle,~ he subvocalized. ~Green room 3.~ Not waiting for acknowledgement, he stood and kicked the door open, scowling.
Toad? Scott thought disbelieving, leaving the room where he'd left one (significantly substandard) fighter unconscious on the floor and heading in the direction Sam's transmission had indicated.
"Oh-ho," Toad said with a savage sort of cheerfulness, giving Kyle one last kick before turning to Sam. "Should've figured. Here to rescue the kid, are you? So predictable."
Predictable cut both ways, and Sam grinned right back at Toad. "Hey, Storm, y'all might want ta get inside quick. Ah got someone here who's jus' -dyin'- ta renew acquaintances," he spoke in a normal conversational voice. His grin widened at the way Toad's face blanched. ~Flank,~ he subvocalized quickly when Toad's eyes shifted away from his lips, knowing that Cyclops would understand what he meant.
The color returned quickly to Toad's face, and cannily, he leaned over and hauled the half-conscious Kyle up off the floor, holding him up like a human shield. "I think she might want to rethink throwing lightning around," he said smugly. "Wouldn't want to overload the boy's healing factor, would we?"
~One step to your left,~ came Scott's subvocalized reply over the coms, and as Sam moved, ruby light lanced outwards from the door, striking Toad very precisely in the shoulder and spinning him around. The optic blast wasn't strong enough to knock him down. It did however make him drop Kyle.
Thrusting off the foot he planted as he stepped left, Sam darted into the room, low to the ground and just behind Cyclops' optic blast. Grabbing Kyle under the shoulders, he quickly dragged the boy out of Toad's reach and stood up implacably, arms folded across his chest.
It would seem to Kyle, later, that he was always waking up to being in pain, being dragged somewhere, or being in a lot of trouble. This time, it was all three. He cracked the eye that wasn't swollen shut open, and then closed it again with a groan at the sight of Sam towering over him. There was going to be a lecture in his future, at least one, if not a lot of them. He just -knew- it.
Scott raised an eyebrow as Toad straightened. The other mutant got as far as opening his mouth before Scott blasted him again, in this chest this time, and this time, he did knock him down. "No visor anymore," he told Toad coldly, before his gaze flickered sideways to Sam. "How's Kyle?"
Sam cocked his head over his shoulder. Kyle's eyes were closed, but Sam wasn't fooled. "Judgin' by that groan, Ah'd say he's in a world of hurt, but he'll live," he replied. Kyle had definitely gotten himself in a heap of trouble, but nobody deserved to be beaten as hard as Toad had apparently done to Kyle, even considering the healing factor. Turning his head back, he watched Toad struggle to his feet. "So, we playin' Whack-a-Toad? Mind if Ah get a few licks in?" he asked cheekily.
Dammit. They knew he was awake. Ish. Awakeish. It was definitly not all the way awake. And damn Sam and his hearing the groan. Kyle shook his head, trying to throw off the fog from having been pounded in the face with Toad's stinky nasty feet a couple of dozen times, and struggled to sit up. "Me too..." he mumbled.
"Don't be ridiculous," Scott said to Sam, and the temperature in the room dropped several degrees as he looked at Kyle. "And you - settle down and let your healing factor work. We'll get you out of here momentarily." He gave Toad a hard look, debating options. Kyle's safety came first, but there had to be a way... Toad sprang at him, and Scott caught him squarely in the chest with another optic blast. "I can do this all day."
"Ya never let me have any fun," Sam groused. But keeping Kyle out of Toad's way long enough for his healing factor to work was important to. Sam chuckled as Toad struggled to his feet again, taking longer than the time before. As the other mutant darted a look at him, Sam ignited his blast field where he stood. "Y'all really think you're gonna get it any easier from me?" he asked mockingly.
"'m fine to kick him in the face coupla times..." Kyle protested weakly. "Ass deserves it.." He growled low in his chest, and tried to stand up. Toad was down and he wanted revenge. Cheap revenge was still -revenge- and the more Kyle thought about hurting Toad a bit, the less he thought kicking a man when he was down was wrong. The fucker had broken his -jaw- and left him in pain all night. He deserved pain in return.
"Take Kyle out of here," Scott said very precisely to Sam, still eyeing Toad. Knock him out, place a quick call to the authorities? Could work. "I'll follow shortly."
Shaking his head as Kyle tried to stand up and failed, Sam ducked down to lift the boy into a fireman's carry over his voluble protests. "Y'all ain't in any condition ta be kickin' anythin'," he admonished Kyle. "'Sides, y'all are in enough trouble as it is, could might be ya should just not try an' get yourself in any deeper?" Straightening, he grunted at the weight distributed on his shoulders as he moved for the door.
Kyle muttered in resignation. He was going to be grounded forever. And possibly longer than that. They'd get Forge to build a time machine, send him back a year, and ground him from -then-. "Still think I should get to bite the fuckface's feet off. Or at least break an arm... or jaw." His jaw had healed, at least enough so he could talk. "Or knock out a coule of teeth. Or rip off his bffgfmmdfdg..." Despite Sam clamping a firm hand over Kyle's mouth, a stream of what had to be muffled profanity continued for a few more seconds before he rolled his eyes and finally ceased trying to be heard.
Scott made the mistake of looking in Sam and Kyle's direction to make sure that Sam had a good grip on the boy and Kyle wasn't about to come running over and put any of those threats into action. It was definitely a mistake, because Toad seized the opportunity. Springing up off the floor, Toad did a flip in mid-air, his feet slamming into Scott's chest and knocking him to the ground - incidentally, clearing himself a path to the door.
Sam let out a 'yipe' in surprise as Toad bounded past him. By the time he managed to set Kyle gently down, Toad had bounded down the hall and around the corner. There was no way Sam was going to catch him without using his blast field, and that was out of the question indoors. Youra had been a matter of survival, and blasting through walls was incidental. Property damage here would probably be a fantastically bad idea. Instead, he walked over to where Scott was clutching at his chest where Toad had landed. "Ya all right?" he asked solicitously.
"... oh, fine," Scott wheezed, but set his jaw and hauled himself up off the floor. Sure. Take your eyes off the member of the Brotherhood. Great survival strategy. "Pick Kyle up," Scott gritted, one hand pressed to his side, "and let's get out of here. And you," he said, as Kyle looked up at them, "are grounded until the end of the world."
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