xp_logs | Empty Quarter: Sirocco (Reply)

En route to Mauritania, Ororo checks on the one member of the team she's worried about. (Astonishingly, it's not Nathan.) Jim gets some words of wisdom from Ororo's own experience.

For the second time in as many weeks Ororo found herself on a jet bound for Africa, though she had a slightly better feeling about this mission than she had about heading to Cairo with Remy and Marie. At least I can be sure Nate and Lorna will not try to sell off Kurt to better our chances of success, she thought dryly. She glanced over the team, glad to note that they all seemed relatively calm and composed - even Nate, happily enough.I suppose it was silly to worry.

The one person she was worried about was currently sitting near the back of the jet, apparently lost in thought. Standing, she made her way back to where Haller was sitting, laying a hand on the back of his seat to gain his attention. "I always thought the leathers should have more pockets," she began conversationally. "But since they do not, I suppose 'a penny for your thoughts' will have to remain only a saying."

The younger man looked up. "Another reason I don't wear them. Where would I put my cigarettes?" Jim shifted to slip the unopened pack he'd been fingering back into his jeans' pocket and gave Ororo a lopsided smile. "My thoughts are okay. A little nervous, but I guess that's pretty normal when you're about to semi-illegally enter another country in a covert liberation attempt. I think, anyway. I haven't been doing this for very long."

'Ro smiled at that. "No, I think nerves are a normal occurrence right around this time," she said warmly. "I remember the first time we left for a mission outside of the country - up until then there had been plenty to keep us busy in the States. I was so nervous because not only was it strange and new, but I did not speak the language where we were going. In hindsight it was a very silly thing to be worried about, but I did not know that then. So I think you are very much allowed to be nervous... no one here will tell you otherwise."

Jim laughed a little. "Well, at least I don't have to worry about a language barrier. It's easy to cheat in that area when you're psychic." He rubbed the back of his head nervously. "It's just . . . weird. I guess this is my third technical mission now. Fourth if you count helping Nathan run recon while we were looking for Masque. I'm still getting used to the idea of it. Being out and doing things, I mean. Responsibility." He dropped his hand and gave her another crooked smile. "I just don't want to let anyone down."

"I am sure that you will not do that," Ororo said, taking the seat next to him and leaning across the small aisle. "Unfortunately, all the training in the world cannot compare to the real thing, but you are well prepared for this, I know. I would not have asked that you come if I did not think that."

Jim nodded. "I think I should be able to handle whatever programming the kids have, at least enough to hold them until we can get them to Charles. And the switchboard isn't a problem. I'm good at that. I'll be okay." Back in the plane where you can't see anything that might 'upset' you. Just stay back and be a good boy. Stop. Let it go. Jim rubbed his hands together and sighed. "What was your first international mission? Where did you go?"

"It was to a small village in Peru - nothing on the scale of this mission. Even so, I was very nervous. I would not even have gone, but the Professor though it might be a good idea to send along a raincloud or two... there was a young pyrokinetic not quite in control of his powers yet." 'Ro smiled, remembering that mission and the thankfully-positive outcome it had. "Even though I did not speak the language, I could still understand 'thank you' well enough. And that made the next mission just the smallest bit easier."

"Yeah. Success . . . helps." He smiled a little. "I got a hug the first time I used my telepathy to bring someone out of a nightmare. 15 year old boy, touch-based psionics. He'd spent three weeks endlessly reliving his grandfather's cardiac arrest. I got him out of it. That was when I knew that's what I wanted to do with my life." And it had been so hard to risk it after what had happened the first time he'd tried reaching out like that, back before he'd known how to take the proper precautions, but it had been worth it. It's no different from that. They were all new, once. We can do this. Just relax.

"I just have to get comfortable with the leather-clad aspect of the missions, I guess," Jim said, settling back. The smile broadened slightly. "I'm still a little leery of diving into it. I mean . . . the codenames alone. I already answer to enough as it is. And I don't think I should be allowed near those again, anyway. Not after what happened with Clarice." He rubbed his forehead in remembered chagrin. "Scott's going to kill me when he gets back and finds out he's actually got to deal with a trainee named 'Tinky Winky' in the field. Or else just laugh really, really hard."

"Hopefully with the vacation he will be more disposed to laugh," Ororo said with a smirk, still surprised that Clarice actually wanted a codename like that. Teenagers. "I am sure he and I could come up with something equally absurd for you in retribution... I mean, reward. Or even better, just ask Jamie, Clarice and Terry for suggestions. They are quite creative."

Jim groaned. "Well, after this, I won't claim I don't deserve it. Can I just say again how grateful I am that Jamie's already got 'Multiple Man'?"

Ororo chuckled, her expression dissolving into something more pensive as she leaned on the armrest of her chair. "I am sure you will do well on this mission," she murmured, tapping her fingers on her leg. "And you do not have to leave the jet. I only wonder how the rest of us are going to avoid recognition when we arrive."

The younger man nodded. "I admit, I was kind of wondering about that. I mean . . . you and Lorna have the hair, and Kurt . . . Nate's not exactly easy to miss, either. As covert strike-forces go we're a little conspicuous."

"We ought to invest more in wigs," Ororo mused absently, her attention obviously absorbed by this predicament. Perhaps she hadn't divided herself up as much as Scott had, but in a situation like this, Storm was always thinking even when Ororo only wanted to talk with her teammates. They needed to be inconspicuous, but they could only use what they had brought along… Suddenly her focus snapped back to Haller, and she grinned apologetically at him. "Excuse me, I need to check if we have any extra cloth on board. And night vision goggles."

--

Nathan's the one who turns the table and reassures Ororo as they head towards their LZ.

"Stop worrying," was Nathan's comment as he appeared in the cockpit, easing himself down into the copilot's seat that Kurt had vacated a little while back in order to check the medical equipment. He looked sideways at Ororo, his lips twitching briefly, then out the canopy at the Atlantic far below them. "I know this is all happening very fast, but your plan is sound. We'll be fine."

They were nearing the coordinates, and Ororo had been concentrating hard enough on their flight path that she barely noticed Nate's entrance. At his words, however, she looked up, a brief smile twitching across her lips. "The plan was thrown together very quickly - I am not sure 'sound' is the proper term for such a technique."

Nathan rolled his eyes, slouching in the chair. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with flying by the seat of your pants," he said primly. "I used to do it all the time. Of course, things also had this bad habit of blowing up in my vicinity when I did that, but I can assure you I will be endeavoring to minimize the explosions this time out. Ex-Mistra conditioning staff or no ex-Mistra conditioning staff." He was coming off as a little... well, off, he knew. But the flippant approach was the only way he could think of to reassure the others that he was indeed handling this just fine. Without actually having to sit down and reassure them, which was just tedious.

"That is very reassuring," Ororo said dryly, though she did turn to him with a grateful smile. "I appreciate your forebearance." Her smile soon faded, however, as she remembered all the little uncertainties that would remain in the plan until they had landed and more fully assessed the situation. "It is not that I have not considered all our options, only that I wish to be sure I have picked the right ones... if only Scott was here."

"Hey," Nathan said sternly. "None of that. We're going to get it done," he said, more reassuringly. "No plan ever survives contact with the enemy, remember. But all of us have faith in your ability to edit on the fly." He said it with a sort of matter-of-factness that was more convincing that earnestness would have been.

"Thank you, Nathan. This is not the time for doubts, I know. I have faith that the team will ensure everything goes well."

Nathan nodded, but his expression grew ever so slightly distant as he stared out the canopy. "It'll be good to do this," he finally said. "Not just for the sake of mopping up the loose ends those two techs represent. But I always felt like... GW and the others had to leave the job undone. I know there are more of these camps out there," he said a bit awkwardly, "but it'll be good to see one more shut down. He would have been glad to see it too."

Now it was Ororo's turn to look sympathetic, and she nodded her agreement. "It may not happen as quickly as we might like. But it will happen, of that I am sure." She lifted her hand from the controls for a moment to touch his shoulder, giving it a squeeze before resuming their place on the yoke. "Thanks to good people and hard work."

--

Ororo creates all the cover they'll need. Under the cover of a sandstorm, she and Kurt make for the training barracks, deal with the guards handily, and begin transporting the children to the Blackbird.

"Prepare for camouflage in one minute and counting," Ororo vocalized into the comms, stepping off the Blackbird and onto the hard-packed ground where they had set down. She was wearing her leathers, of course, along with night-vision goggles and a large cloth wrapped over her forehead, mouth and neck. The rest of the team was similarly attired - they would need it in less than a minute.

Under the specialized lenses of the goggles Ororo's eyes clouded to white as the winds around her began to pick up. She pulled currents from all over, sweeping them across the mounded dunes and scooping up swatches of sand that flurried in the air. She kept up the winds until the air was clogged with sand; she could barely see the Blackbird for all its dark immensity. If they see us coming, it is not for lack of trying.

"The sandstorm is live," she relayed, her voice slightly muffled as she reached up to tug the cloth more securely over her mouth. "Cable and Polaris, you are good to go. Nightcrawler, we are ready to begin our mission as well. Be careful, everyone, and keep yourselves tightly covered." She listened as Nate and Lorna acknowledged, and waited for Kurt to make his way out into the storm.

Kurt followed very shortly afterwards, as covered as the others against the storm. "Lead on," he said simply, with a half-smile though she couldn't see it.

In fact, she could barely see him at all, but she nodded all the same and started off in the direction of the building they believed housed the children. Though the sandstorm would give them cover to get close enough to the building, there was still the matter of the guards that were bound to be there, not to mention the children themselves. For a moment Ororo wished they had brought a larger team, though she reassured herself that in a case like this, stealth was nearly always better than numbers.

She almost stumbled into the building when they reached it, stopping just in time to keep from smashing her goggles against the wall. Good... Scott would have my head if I ruined a pair like that. "We've reached it," she told Kurt, glancing around for him in the storm. "Now we must find a way in."

"I cannot teleport," Kurt replied, squinting through the goggles at the building. "I have never seen inside... so perhaps some recon, before we rescue the children?"

"That seems like it would be in order," Ororo said. "Let me know if you find an entrance." She began to move slowly along the wall, trailing one hand along it in hopes of locating a way in - a door, a window, anything.

Kurt started to move in the other direction, equally slowly, peering at the side of the building and reaching to feel his way along as well.

Ororo wasn't quite sure how much time had passed - with her face wrapped and the sands whirling past, it was hard to judge anything, much less the passage of time. All of a sudden her hand moved from the rough surface of the wall to something smoother, and she paused, peering more closely at the surface before her. "Kurt, I think I've found a door. It is approximately... one hundred feet from the starting point."

"On my way." And he turned to struggle back through the storm, sticking close to the side of the building until he found her.

She was trying to work the handle when he arrived, though of course it wasn't budging. Things couldn't be that easy, after all. "It's locked," she relayed to him. "Unless you can think of another way in, I can try to pick it." She hadn't exactly told anybody, but since her return from Cairo with Remy and Marie she had been practicing her lockpicking in the odd moments of free time she had.

He gave her a sideways look at that, but it wasn't as if he had any better ideas, and he could see how it might be a useful skill even now. "I think that may be the only way, until I have seen it."

"We will think of a way to state it in the report so that it does not sound so... last-minute," Ororo assured him, crouching down in front of the door. Slipping off her gloves, she reaching into the pouch at her belt that contained a few long, slim pieces of metal. "Now let us hope this works."

Kurt stood guard, knowing the storm would probably take care of most of the necessity for him, but it was something useful he could do while she broke in.

Funnily enough, even with all the practice Ororo had been having back at the mansion, picking the lock to this door wasn't simple. Of course, it may have had something to do with the 60 mile per hour winds and the buckets of sand being thrown around, obscuring her vision and making the lock grimy and hard to manipulate. Finally, though, she felt more than heard the click that meant the catch had been released, and trying the handle once more showed her that it was indeed unlocked. "Got it," she said to Kurt, rising smoothly and glancing at him before pulling the door open. She didn't even need to tell him to be careful - they both knew that the presence of children would make their jobs that much harder once they got in the building.

"Then in we go," he said grimly, following her inside.

It seemed they had stepped into a barracks-style dormitory, each wall lined with cots and small dressers in which the children's clothing was ostensibly stored. The windows had been shuttered over to protect them from the howling winds outside, and the entire room was dim. This wasn't a problem for Kurt and Ororo, obviously, as they had nightvision goggles on, but the guards in the room were slightly at a disadvantage as they moved towards the intruders. Ororo counted three, each with a weapon held at the ready. "I have right," she murmured to Kurt, immediately moving in that direction.

Kurt nodded silently, wasting no time before he teleported forward to kick the weapon out of the left-hand guard's grasp, then turned on the middle one.

Luckily Ororo was able to close the distance between herself and the third guard before he thought to shoot, grappling with him for a moment before a mysterious gust of wind knocked him to the ground. One more conveniently-placed hit and he was out cold, his gun spinning away on the concrete floor, far out of reach.

Kurt was only briefly occupied by the guard he'd disarmed, knocking him down then pulling a small piece of clothing from one of the dressers to tie him up.

Once they had taken care of the guards, Ororo immediately turned towards the far end of the building, where a group of nearly a dozen children were huddled together. "We must calm them and get them to safety," she relayed to Kurt, heading for them slowly. "Do you think you can transport them all?"

"Not all at once," he said grimly. "Perhaps two at a time. If it is done that way... if I must, I can."

"Very well. You will take the youngest - I will try to help the older ones make it back to the Blackbird. Hopefully we will be prepared to leave shortly." #Haller, we are on our way.#

--

Elsewhere in the storm, Nathan and Lorna make rather more of a mess to add to the diversion. They find the two ex-Mistra targets and subdue them and some more guards. It doesn't go quite as smoothly, but the mission is still accomplished.

"One hell of an impressive sandstorm," Nathan murmured over his com as he and Lorna made their more-than-slightly unsteady way - the wind was strong enough that it was hard to stand up - down the dune towards the building where he'd 'spotted' the empath. Hopefully the other ex-Mistra bastard was in there with him. That would simplify things.

Nathan was following the empathy but Lorna was following Nathan. The goggles covered what little of face wasn't by a long strip of cloth. Even through the fabric she could feel the wind whipping grains of sand in endless abrasion over them both. "Yeah, it is. 'Ro does superior work," she answered calmly, only half listening. Human EM signatures were weak at the best of times and she had to strain to keep a sense of where the guards were.

Nathan reached out briefly on the switchboard to Jim. "The others are on-target," he said. "They might reach the kids before we reach ours." That wasn't ideal, not when Ororo and Kurt were going to be trying to get possibly a dozen kids back out through the storm. "We need to make sure we draw most of the attention," Nathan said, squinting through the goggles. There was a Land Rover, down there...

And now it was flying at a pair of sentries.

Lorna rolled her eyes as he tossed about the auto like it was a Matchbox car. Another guard walking the perimeter found himself suddenly attacked by his standard issue and wonderfully metal rifle. "Let's just get down there before our targets escape out the back door, hey?"

"I think adding some aggressive inanimate objects is a perfectly good diversionary tactic," Nathan protested, but did indeed pick up the pace, even as he snatched at another vehicle and a couple of the tents that had surprisingly not collapsed under the weight of the storm.

"Give me those." Lorna tugged the tent from him and drilled the metal further into the ground, trapping the men inside and pinning them down. "It's not if they get away." More guns turned against their owners, twisting up, refusing to fire or firing randomly, narrowly missing vital bits of their comrades. Through it all, Lorna and Nate made their way to the building, the storm concealing them fairly well and the confusion doing the rest.

Nathan stopped at the door of the building, 'listening'. "I'll take point," he subvocalized, his hands very slightly unsteady as he yanked off his goggles. "Our two targets, three guards..."

Lorna's goggles came off as well and were tucked away without a second thought. She was still watching Nathan closely but for an entirely different reason now. "I'll subdue our targets. You get the guards." Her subvocalized response was entirely neutral. "Door's unlocked, probably alarmed."

He gave her a quick, sharp look, then turned his attention to the door. A few quick telekinetic manipulations took care of the security system, and a solid kick with a little TK added took care of the door.

There were five in the room, just as he'd sensed. Three went for their weapons immediately; Nathan slammed the first against the wall hard enough to knock him out instantly. The second went headfirst into the television in the corner of the room.

The other two reacted more slowly, the first half-rising from his chair only to find himself yanked back down and the metal arms of it banding around his chest, strapping him in. The second found himself face to face with green eyes framed by a swath of dark cloth, seconds before his head struck the wall behind him. Lorna bled metal out of one sleeve to encircle his wrists then turned to check on Nate. "Cable?"

"Clear," Nathan said expressionlessly and dropped the third guard, whose head had been abruptly introduced to the ceiling. He turned and looked first at the unconscious empath. "Good pick for the one to knock out," he said quietly, then looked at the one who was still conscious and aware. "You I remember," he said, pulling the cloth down from his face. "Velasco. Neuropharmacologist," he said to Lorna. Velasco was gaping at him in apparent horror and obvious recognition.

Lorna pulled the cloth away as well and paced over to join Nathan. "I thought he'd be taller." She shrugged and tapped her comm. "Status?"

Nathan reached down the switchboard as well, while Lorna used the coms. "We might get out of here with relatively little fuss after all," he murmured, then looked down at Velasco. "Easier to carry him if he's out," he said, and slammed a fist into the man's jaw.

It felt rather good.

Lorna paused in her check and glared at him. "Did he look like he was getting out of that chair any time soon, Cable?" She stepped between him and the now unconscious scientist. "Storm and Nightcrawler are nearly done. Let's get our guests back. Don't you dare harm them again."

"We didn't want him shouting for help," Nathan said without a trace of repentance, and bent to pick up the empath, slinging him over one shoulder. "The guards are out cold. They won't be following."

Lorna lifted the other man, chair and all. This was neither the time nor the place. But it also wasn't over. "Haller," she murmured into her com as they left, "we're on our way."