Scott and Cain, Friday

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Back in San Diego, Scott drops off the first of the replacement coms he picked up while in Westchester. Cain, like everyone else, is applying himself to the relief efforts, but is somewhat preoccupied by what did and didn't happen out on that platform as well.


It hadn't taken very long to track Cain down - he was, after all, one of the most visible members of the team, and apparently was doing a very enthusiastic job of pitching in with disaster relief. Scott nodded in thanks to the fire lieutenant - he was making a habit of making sure that whoever was in charge at any of these sites knew he was there, to avoid any potential problems - and came around the corner of the building to see Cain doing his best to demolish a building whose upper two stories had already collapsed.

"Juggernaut," he called out, stopping at a safe distance.

Cain held up a hand to Scott, motioning for him to stay where he was. Looking over the building, he walked in through the broken gap where a set of glass doors had been only hours before. The city emergency personnel had been overjoyed at being told some of the damaged buildings could be razed quickly and safely, but none of them expected a seven-and-a-half-foot tall man to show up smiling at the police station and ask "What do you want me to hit?"

Marking two load-bearing walls with spray paint, Cain walked back out into the sunlight, or what of it was penetrating through the smoke from random fires and the omnipresent dust in the air. "What's new, Cyke?" he asked, "If there's any kittens stuck in trees, Nate drew the straw for that detail."

Scott raised an eyebrow. "No kittens. Although I wish we had someone who talks to animals - I gather the zoo took some damage, too." He pulled out the new com and handed it to Cain. "I took the 'Bird back to Westchester yesterday - drop-offs, pick-ups, and resupplying. These were first on my list of things to grab, obviously."

Cain turned the new earpiece over in his hand. Even despite Lorna's emergency EMP, his had been somewhat damaged from his underwater trek to the oil platform and back. For all their high-tech design, no one had apparently thought to make the communicators waterproof.

He clipped the small device to his collar, cracking his knuckles and pacing. "So," he finally asked, "we got a general bodycount yet? Because I'd kind of like to be able to put a total on just how pissed I am we let that bastard go."

Scott sighed. "A lot more injured than dead, from what I'm hearing," he said. Any dead were too many, but it could have been so much worse... "I'm not happy he got away myself, Cain, but if we hadn't had three telekinetics on the beach within that five-minute window we would have had a lot more dead than we do. And if I'd sent anyone after him, it would've been Nate and Marie."

Cain growled under his breath, gripping a concrete stanchion hard enough to send cracks along its surface. "We're always going to be saying that, ain't we? 'Next time', like we're gonna make the decision then we take him down. Because each time he walks away, it damn well guarantees there'll be a next time."

"Floated away," Scott said, and waited for Cain to look back at him. "He floated away this time, remember?" He went on before Cain could say anything in response to that. His voice was low, even, more out of tiredness than any real effort to moderate his tone. "Look, I'm going to be thinking about what orders I did and didn't give on that platform for a while. Right now, I'm too damned tired to have come to any conclusions about what I should or shouldn't have done. There are a lot of people dead because of what Magneto did. There are a lot of people not dead because of what we did. There's going to be plenty of time for second-guessing and figuring out what we do the next time. But right now, we clean up his mess."

Thinking about that for a while, Cain nodded and looked around the wreckage. "Could be worse next time," he said finally, "but it's a lot worse without us, ain't it?"

Scott nodded. "We nearly had him this time," he said quietly. "Keep that in mind. He keeps overreaching himself like this, and he'll do the job for us." He looked around at the damaged buildings, then shook his head. "I should go," he said. "Keep in touch. I know you don't wear down like the rest of us, but check in on a regular basis anyway. I'm going to go back and find that friendly Guard commander." Scott mustered a slight smile, tapping the side of his head. "A wide-beam optic blast clears streets of debris quite nicely. There are still too many places where emergency vehicles can't get through."

Cain smiled, his armor solidifying around him as he stood up straight. "I think I could get used to this whole 'breaking things for the public good' business. Too bad it's what they call a 'niche market'."

Wandering back into the building, he called over his shoulder to Scott. "Next time, huh?"

"I sure as hell hope so," was Scott's reply as he walked away into the ruins.