Recovery: Juggernaut and Tarot, Friday

[x-juggernaut.livejournal.com]

It turns out that more than people have been trapped in the rubble and need rescuing. Cain and Marie-Ange get tasked to help recover some rather dangerous material. One of them is running on her last vestiges of energy, and the other's having to work with the absolute last people he wants to. Surprisingly, they do it well.




Cain sighed, looking over the blueprints that he'd been given. Working with the Marines. He rolled his eyes at the thought, and made a note to 'accidentally' whack Summers with a car or something the next time he ran into his team leader.

"Shore it up here, here, and here," he mumbled to himself, "they get in and out, and then take the whole mess down. Easy enough."

Taking a drink of water from one of the omnipresent Red Cross supply stations, Cain leaned an elbow on the domed helmet he'd set on the makeshift planning table and looked over at Marie-Ange. "So here's your chance to test that first-semester architecture knowledge. You think you can do your thing and keep this part of the armory from collapsing for, say, thirty minutes?"

Marie-Ange looked down at the blueprints, frowning. She could see major damage to the entire Coronado naval air base, and the copy of the blueprints had been marked with the internal damage they knew about. "If I can see what I am doing, yes." She finally answered. "Second semester, and I do not know what this..." she pointed with one finger at what she thought might be a column on the blueprints. "Is for. Is it necessary? This is easier if I know what I am looking at.."

"Don't look like a load-bearing column," Cain remarked, moving his fingers over the drawing and tapping his finger over the spot Angie had marked. "Stupid modern decorative architecture. Yeah, it ain't nothing."

Cain rolled up the blueprints and handed them to the young Frenchwoman, then reached for his helmet, replacing it on his head. "Ready? Then in we go," he said determinedly,

The blueprints went into the backpack she'd picked up from.. somewhere. Marie-Ange didn't remember where she'd gotten it. They stuck out, but it left her hands free until she needed them. She tugged her jacket back down, chilly despite the warm California air. "I can only make images as far as I can see, when they have to be this big. If we have to go in further then that..."

The sound of combat boots on concrete behind them brought familiar memories to Cain's ears as he turned to see a platoon of Marines in formation, with a man wearing the insignia of a senior NCO on his collar striding forward.

"Staff Sergeant Radichak, sir, ma'am. My Marines and I are going to be your escorts into the secure area of the station. I trust they've made you aware of the material to be retrieved?"

From under the helmet, the sound of Cain's teeth grinding was barely audible. "Yeah, three air-to-ship warheads. Might be armed, might not. And you can't just lob a mortar round in there and detonate them because if the winds change and start going inland, you got all them nasty clouds of whatever shit's out there blowing into what's left of a populated area."

The staff sergeant's face tightened, obviously holding back an angry retort. "Sir, I realize we've been given the orders to coordinate with your task force on this, and my Marines will execute those orders to the fullest extent of their ability. If you have a problem with this situation, my men, or my Corps, I'm going to politely ask that you stuff it. Sir."

Marie-Ange winced, and most definitly did not massage the bridge of her nose, or say anything, or do much of anything, outside of trying to look as much as possible like she just wanted to get her job done. Cain was older, more expirenced, and she knew why he was unhappy. And she couldn't say a thing about it. Not to Cain, because it was not like she was in a position to tell him what to do, and not to the Marine, because it was none of his business why Cain was cranky.

Cain seethed, but held his objections in check. These Marines were just doing their job, following orders. Like he had once. Even after years in a coma, and even more wandering, he'd finally surrendered to the military and received nothing more for his service than a Bad Conduct Discharge and house arrest to Xavier's. Understandably, he felt, he held a bit of a grudge towards most folks in a uniform.

But today he had to put grudges aside. With a gesture, he stepped aside and let the Marines lead the way to the half-destroyed armory facility.

When they arrived, the Marines spread out into a perimeter, two by two. Staff Sergeant Radichak pointed at Cain and Marie-Ange, then to the building. The three-story structure looked about as stable as a house of cards, at least two-thirds of the foundation having collapsed into an unexpected chasm, and the overhanging portion of the upper floors still dropping small pieces of rubble.

"Well, that looks about as safe as juggling live grenades," Cain mumbled. "Show me what you can do, kid."

Marie-Ange pulled the blueprints back out of her backpack and spread them wide on the clearest patch of ground she could find. They were copies, she wasn't worried about damaging them, but she needed them to stay intact so she could use them to shore up the building. It was all she had.

"I do not know how stable this will be until it appears. Test it first, please?" She asked, nodding at Cain, before kneeling down on the ground and concentrating on the blueprints, and fixing the structure in her mind.

Ahead of her, blue glassy floors and walls appeared to grow out of the damaged building, joined at the corners by thick beams that could have been ivory, if they had been real. From the roof down, they expanded and connected, merging and disappearing into the ground. "And if any of you touch the floors or walls and come away, ah, with slime on your hands, let me know immediatly. And then get to stable ground."

The Marines moved in, followed by Cain's careful approach. He watched as they entered the building, some of them openly gawking at the restoration of a building they had only seconds before seen as rubble with their own eyes.

"Staff sergeant!" came the call from inside. "Bravo team reports all warheads secure! We're moving out now!"

Again in perfect two-by-two pairs, the Marines exited the building, carrying the conical explosive warheads in teams. Radichak counted his men off, then turned to Cain, who just blinked.

"That's it?" he said. "Took you guys like what, a minute?"

The lead Marine smirked at Cain, hands on his web gear. "We're Marines, sir. First in, last out, wartime or peacetime. Now, higher command says this structure's got to come down. Ain't safe in case looters or squatters get some idea to go rummaging through. The show is yours, sir."

Cracking his knuckles, Cain turned to look at Marie-Ange. "Bring her down, Tarot. I'll get what's left."

Marie-Ange was still stunned at how quickly the Marines had recovered from watching the building just reappear in front of her, and then how fast they'd gone in, and come right back out.

Feeling the thud of dozens of Marine boots on her imaged floors didn't help. It didn't hurt, but it she could feel it. Thwap, thwap, like her eyelids were fluttering, or she was blinking, only with her eyes open. It was the only way she had to describe it. It took a moment for her to pull the images back, leaving steaming trails of ectoplasm melting into the sun as the blue glass disappeared into the air.

Watching the supports of the building fade and the upper floors begin to sag under gravity again, the Marines around Marie-Ange took up a protective posture. Some were looking at her with wonder, others with a restrained mixture of fear and awe. Boot camp had prepared them for life in the Corps, complete with bullets flying over their head and mortar rounds going off in the sand around them. Nowhere in any training doctrine did it cover working alongside a mutant girl who could create perfectly solid structures out of thin air.

After getting the nod from Marie-Ange, Cain turned to the wreckage and lowered his head. One step, two steps, and he began to run. Fifty yards of lead-up space, and he was moving at close to sixty miles an hour. The first wall of reinforced concrete was like sponge cake to him, for all the resistance it presented. The series of load-bearing walls didn't slow Cain down in the slightest, as he barreled through them like a human wrecking ball.

Exiting the other side of the building, he lumbered to a stop and turned around for a second pass. This time, arms out, Cain smashed through support pillars, taking out the corners of the building, what was left of the upper floors collapsing in his wake.

"...mother of God..." one of the Marines breathed, watching the spectacle of one man reducing a building to a pile of scrap with his bare hands. The others nodded, alternately impressed and intimidated by the show of raw force.

Marie-Ange was used to it. She'd raised her t-shirt to cover her mouth when the dust from the concrete started to spread, and just watched what was left of the building come down, blinking her eyes to keep them clear.

The last scraps of the ruined armory fell to the ground, concrete walls collapsing like dominoes into an irregular heap. Stone and metal creaked as Cain stomped casually out of the debris, brushing dust off his hands. "Just another day in the Corps, right, Staff Sergeant?"

Radichak composed himself, chuckling and smiling at Cain. "Hoo-rah, Sergeant Marko."

At Cain's doubletake, the Marine smiled wider. "I wasn't about to put my Marines' safety in the hands of just any civilian task force unless they let me know who I was dealing with. Your personnel jacket's an interesting one," he explained. "And I have to tell you, BCD* or not, as far as this Marine's concerned, you're still Corps to the bone, Marko."

Cain paused for a moment, then reached out to shake the Marine's offered hand. "Semper fi, Staff Sergeant. Semper fi."

---

*Bad Conduct Discharge