Believing is Seeing -- Law & Disorder

[x-polarisstar.livejournal.com]

Clarice's tip off changes the direction of the plan. Aware that they're now looking at mutants as the focus of the investigation, they call in a few reinforcements.



"We have a problem."

The words were not designed to be reassuring. They were less so, growled out in a basso rumble from an eight-foot tall man who resembled nothing so much as a bear and made Milena's office seem smaller the instant he stepped into it. But however brutish the face, Matteo's large dark eyes were bright with intelligence - and right this moment, an indignant sort of anger.

"Police cars," he growled to Rob and Milena. "Outside. I saw them out the window - I was up here fixing one of the inside cameras."

Rob blinked, looking out the small window of Milena's office, but seeing nothing more than the dingy alley that the back of the club bordered. "We get cops around this neighborhood all the time," he ventured, nervously adjusting his collar. "Hell, we get a few in here now and then. You think it's something out of the ordinary?"

Milena's head snapped around to him, silver earrings swinging. "You think?" she said in a scathing tone. "It's a raid, you idiot!" Unlike Rob, she had no doubts as to what was going on. Milena had been through so many raids her awareness bordered on prescience. She didn't know what had triggered it, or what charges were being brought, but she didn't need to. Milena had been in this business long enough to know police meant only one thing: it was time to leave.

Without a moment's hesitation the woman drew a ring of keys from the sleek black purse sitting beside her and threw them onto the desk. "Matteo, get rid of everything," she said, rising from her seat. "If the cops find it we're screwed."

Matteo's ears twitched and he shook his great shaggy head irritably. "I'll do my job," he rumbled at her, already turning back towards the door. "I'm going back down to the server room. Have Rob take care of the office." The dismissive look he gave the other man was more than mildly contemptuous. "See if you can hold them off." The smile that followed that facetious comment bared very sharp teeth and would have sent most people fleeing in terror.

"You heard him," Milena hissed, whirling on the human as Matteo shuffled out, "do it!" Three rapid steps saw her to the door and she paused, purse in hand, the delicate silver lines that traced her face contorting as the woman bared her own teeth in one last nasty smile. "Or you know what will happen."

And then Rob was alone in the room.

Rob stood there for a moment, the empty room around him before his eyes fell onto the stack of papers that outlined the club's entire business structure. The girls' real names and ages, for one. All with Milena's name on them.

"Fuck this, I'm out of here," he said, as he scooped up the papers. Heading down the back staircase, he checked the alleyway before ducking out and heading for the first black-and-white cop car he saw.

"My name's Robert Weinstein," he said as he held the stack of papers in one hand, his other hand raised and open, "and I'd like to make a deal."


********

Logan hadn't been in these passages for long, but he knew he didn't like them. Featureless beige walls, drop ceiling, and a linoleum floor. The air reeked of the industrial-strength air-conditioning and he didn't have much time or much idea where he needed to go. But there was one scent the climate control couldn't scrub out, and it was one that had no place being in Southern California.

Bear.

As he continued down the hall, the lights went out. It was pitch-black for an instant, before red emergency lights came on at either end of the hall, barely enough illumination to see by.

But Logan's night-sight was superlative, and the dim red emergency lights shed more than enough light for him to see by, if they also gave things a rather Infernal air. He progressed down the hall slowly, every sense straining. Unfortunately, he wasn't quite fast enough to keep his leg completely out from a seemingly-ordinary chunk of linoleum that gave way and the titanium steel blades that sheared into his leg at mid-calf. If his bones weren't adamantium, he'd have lost the leg. He didn't waste breath on cursing, instead popping claw to free himself.

The emergency lights flickered, the sound of heavy footsteps from the club above echoing - the SWAT team continuing their work. Down here, however, it was nearly quiet, save for a mechanical humming from a closed and reinforced door at the end of the hall.

Logan gave his leg time to close up the wound and heal the worst of the muscle damage. He kept himself light on his feet, making as little noise as he could. He saw the door - a heavy keypad-locked deal that looked tough enough to keep any but the truly determined out. Logan dropped to all fours to put his nose at the base of the door and inhale deeply.

His nose touched the ground at the base of the door, and immediately, an arc of electricity jolted through him.

Logan swore at that, sprawled out against the floor with his face smouldering. This was going to take a little time to heal - he couldn't see anything, couldn't hear anything, and couldn't smell anything but ozone. Bad idea, and whoever had wired this little lair was advancing on Logan's Shit List.

Once Logan's face had healed, he popped his claw through the faceplate of the number-lock, engaged the opening sequence, and then entered the room beyond. Judging by the sheer amount of computer shit in here, this room had to be important. And he had a live target.

A tower of computer equipment a good foot taller than his head toppled over abruptly - directly onto him. Behind it, an enormous dark shape moved in the darkness, its deep basso growl audible even over the crash of breaking equipment.

Matteo was not impressed. He knew he'd been cutting it close, staying down here this long - he'd always had the system set up in a way that he could crash it quickly and destroy the data, but quickly and instantly were two different things. And who the hell was this? Didn't look like police. Police didn't tend to have metal claws.

Okay, this has just gone from interesting to very interesting. Logan popped all his claws and struck quickly, looking to take him down quick and clean. Unfortunately, the falling computer equipment spoiled his attack, knocking him wide and to the ground.

More came toppling towards him. It all weighed a great deal - it was expensive computer equipment, and the brutish face that peered briefly down at Logan was twisted with anger at the waste. But Matteo lumbered towards the door in the next moment, taking advantage of Logan's immobility to make a break for it. His job down here was done. Time to get out.

Logan wasn't going to let that happen - even from his place at the bottom of the computer parts pile, he slashed with his claws to wound the ... bear? ... as it rushed by him. Where the fuck did a bear come from?

Matteo growled, and kicked him in the face, breaking Logan's nose - and from the feel of it, one of his own toes. The noise that escaped him then was closer to a roar. Fuck! He had to get out of here. No playing around with whoever the fuck this was.

Logan just let the pain goad him onwards, and he escaped from the pile of parts with a few well-placed swipes of his claws. He stabbed for the bear's hind leg, looking to slow him and give him a great deal of pain. A nice down payment on the beating he owed the guy.

Oh, that was it. Matteo yelped and then grabbed at Logan, one clawed hand grasping the other man's hair and yanking - pulling him right out from under the computer equipment and throwing him against the console. Hardly mattered, now. Nothing left on the system, and the equipment itself was a loss now, anyway.

All God's children had claws, it would seem. Logan let the guy pull him around by his hair and slam him into the console, but in return he kicked off the consoles behind him and went for a quick slash at the guy's muzzle-face-thing. That should get his attention just fine.

Claws scored Matteo's face, but the hit provoked only another growl, and Matteo flung him into another bank of computer equipment. The racks collapsed beneath Logan's weight like toothpicks, and Matteo turned, limping towards the door more determinedly.

Logan wasn't about to let this guy get out that cleanly. He cut his way free and threw himself at the bear, leading with another strike for the guy's hamstrings. You didn't need your hamstrings in order to sing like a canary, after all.

Matteo sidestepped him with more speed than he'd shown thus far, moving through the door and out into the hall. But he was looking back over his shoulder into the room, watching Logan, and thus the darts of the taser held by one of the two SWAT officers who'd followed Logan down took him entirely by surprise. He howled and toppled to the
floor, twitching.

"God damn, he's huge," the other SWAT officer said. "Do we even have restraints that'll hold him?"

"We'll make do," his partner said.

Logan sheathed his claws and grinned at the officers. "He hits hard. Be careful," he said, before a racking coughing spasm overtook him. Seems that that last throw into the racks had punched through a lung. It was healing, but lung hits always made him cough.

********

Milena made her way down the hall to the back way, the heels of her stilettos a sharp tok tok tok on the tiles. She needed to get home -- no, screw that, an ATM would do. She could always buy new things. So what if the cops tossed her place? They wouldn't find anything that mattered, or at least, anything that mattered to her. She'd been dropping identities since she was fifteen. What was one more? A quick makeup job, a bus ticket out of town, and she was free and clear.

She wasn't paid enough for this shit.

There was something wholly unfair about just getting back to non-crippled and being sent out on a mission. Normally Lorna would have complained. But then there were the particulars of the mission: the exploitation of mutants, the exploitation of children and the fact that this was her town and her kids that they'd gone after. Now Lorna was just sort of looking forward to cuffing people.

With the SWAT team at her back covering her approach, Lorna pulled the back door open and moved inside cautiously. The door thudded dully as it closed behind her. Scouting ahead of her with the EM fields, she frowned. There was something odd just ahead. Like a blank spot. Which wasn't possible.

A slight tingle of energy was all the warning Milena had, and it came too late to do any good. Before she could full register what she was feeling she was already around the corner, and almost careened into the young woman who'd been coming up from the other direction.

Green hair, leather outfit, mutant. It wasn't a performer, or anyone she had ever met. Milena could feel the woman's power rolling across the silver latticework of her skin. The Alchemy employee's expression changed instantly.

"Are you with the police?" she asked, voice high and tight. "Oh, thank God!" Silver-laced hands pressed to the woman's face as her shoulders hunched, folding into herself. "He's in the office. Please, you have to get him!"

Lorna could feel the hands pressed to her face, grabbed reflexively on to quite solid wrists but as far as her mutation was telling her, the woman just...wasn't there. The EM fields just melted around her, a null spot that made her hands feel numb where she touched her. Her confusion lasted only a moment though, identifying the very lovely and very distraught woman by the police file on her. "It's okay," Lorna replied calmly, trying to figure out the best way to get her calmed and cuffed without her powers. "It's all over now."

"Please!" Milena cried. She twisted around to cast a fearful grip over her shoulder, dark eyes huge. "He forced me! He said it'd be different, but he was just like all the others. He's worse. His contacts -- I know too much, you can't let the police take me, I'll be dead in a day!"

The fear in her voice, the cold feeling of her skin under Lorna's grip and the resonance, the memory of being forced... Lorna let go and fisted her hands at her sides. "Who is he?" she asked softly.

"His name's Rob Weinstein. He's the manager. He's in the office. You have to hurry, he's trying to destroy the evidence!" Milena stumbled away from the woman, holding out a shaking hand to point. "Hurry!"

"That's what I thought you were going to say." Lorna followed her with two purposeful strides then quite calmly punched her in the stomach, catching her as she doubled over. Just because her powers wouldn't work on the woman that didn't mean she was powerless, "About that being arrested thing..."

There was a strangled 'uff' as Milena buckled around the blow. She staggered backwards, hands clutched protectively around her midsection. "It was . . . 'he forced me,' right?" she said, half coughing, half laughing. "I knew it. Too much. Okay, okay, I give up. Can't blame a girl for trying, right?" She straightened slowly, raising her hands as if to surrender.

And then lunged at Lorna, one shining fist aimed right for her face.

Lorna ducked back but still caught a glancing blow on her jaw and the silver wires scratched over her skin. She seized Milena's wrist again, using her momentum to toss her over her hip into the corridor wall, turning to face the woman. She dropped into a defensive posture. "Nah. It's just that you're a terrible actress."

Milena's side slammed hard into the wall. An outflung arm absorbed the impact and shielded her head, but her desperate stumble brought one foot down hard at the wrong angle. The heel of one of her stilettos snapped.

"Bitch," she snarled, throwing herself away from the wall and right back at Lorna in spite of a twisted ankle and one leg suddenly three inches shorter than the other, "these were new shoes!"

Lorna shrieked indignantly as Milena's hands fisted into her hair and pulled. "Ow, you whore!" She hooked a leg behind one of Milena's and punched her again, sending them both tumbling to the ground. A tiny part of her brain observed that she was now rolling around on the ground with a criminal. It took a moment or two for the rest of her brain to agree that that was probably bad.

The other woman sneered at her, silvered face only inches away. "Since before you were born, honey. And you know what I learned?" A well-manicured hand wrapped around the X-Man's only recently mended arm while one leg bunched beneath her.

"How to get on top."

It hurt too much to even scream as her arm was wrenched backward and Milena rolled, slamming Lorna's head to the floor, momentarily making her see stars. Lorna regarded the rather smug look on the whore's exotic face and was abruptly very much done with this. She yanked an arm free and punched Milena in the face, "Was that supposed to be clever?"

There was a quick blur of motion, limbs twisting, curses falling like stars. Then it was Lorna back on top and Milena face down on the floor, Lorna's knee in her back and arm pinned just above it. "For the last time, you, arrest, deal with it."

As Milena began to spit a reply the two SWAT officers that had been covering the exit burst in, finally having been given the order from the front team to move in. The officers' warning shouts trailed off the instant the scene in the hallway came into full view. They stopped and stared at the two women on the floor: panting, dishevelled, and one straddling the other.

After a pregnant moment the younger, more tense in his posture and still obviously new to the job, lowered his weapon and turned to his partner.

"This is the best job ever."




With the top three taken care of, the remainder of the confusion is cleared up by the SWAT and the rest of the team. Clarice reunites with Shiro who is having a little bit of trouble with the concept of appropriate combat banter.




Shiro was never as glad as he was now that his mutation extended his vision into the infrared. Between the darkness of the club and the smoke bombs the SWAT team was using, it was the only way he could make out people. But he was looking for one in particular. It was hard to move, though, and not just because of all the bodies pressing against him, trying to make a run for it.

Just one quick dose gave him the energy and the alertness to make his way through the crowd, and he found his target . . . wearing pasties, a g-string, and knee-high boots. "What the fuck?"

"Move!" she cried, pushing a too-friendly guy off of her. Trying to cop a feel during a police raid was so tacky. "Oh, hi Shiro!" she said as if nothing was out of the ordinary, once he was close enough for her to make out. "Killer raid, huh?"

"Please tell me that's all part of the gig and not your own personal wardrobe sense," Shiro pleaded, though he was obviously enjoying the view. ". . . How do those even stay on?"

"The eyes of every guy in the room," she replied matter of factly, although she was seething internally from him comment about her personal fashion. He knew her better than that! She was eclectic and random, not slutty.

Pushed by several people trying to run away, Clarice stumbled forward, knocking into another dancer, a girl with lizard scales and a nasty habit of licking the patrons. Well, the customers seemed to like it, even if it was unsanitary.

"Bitch!" the dancer replied, turning around, forked tongue out.

"Oh please," Clarice rolled her eyes and punched the girl squarely in the nose. "Don't fuck with me, lizard breath."

"Meow?" Shiro offered, and then turned to the other girl. "You're under arrest, you know. Or you will be. Better for you to just go up to the nice policeman there and let him show you where to g . . . Fuck!" He just barely managed to jump out of the way of a bolt of lightning. It still managed to scorch his uniform. "I hate the smell of burning leather," he said to no one in particular, looking up to see who'd attacked him.

"Traitorous cunts!" a young man about Shiro's age (an electrokinetic, obviously) cried as he ran up next to the lizard girl.

"Is this where I tell you 'You're FIRED?" Clarice quipped, teleporting behind him and using a chair like a baseball bat. Powers, shmowers, this was a bar brawl free-for-all. At least for the moment.

Sadly, her punch did not knock out the lizard girl, only stunned her and she wrapped her tongue around Clarice arm and pulled. She tried to get free, and really didn't want to take the girls tongue with her in the process, that was overkill. And she kinda felt bad about the last time she did something like that. Kinda. "Hey, Shiro? Wanna help?" she called, still trying to jerk her arm free. Ew.

"You forgot the finger-point," Shiro said to Clarice, dodging another lightning bolt. He tossed a fireball at the electrokinetic, and its explosion knocked him off his feet. Calling up his fire form (overkill? maybe), he charged Clarice's opponent and headbutted her. "It's not 'you're fired' without the finger-point."

Rolling her eyes, Clarice ducked under a firebolt and around behind the electrokinetic, "Here's the deal, hotshot. You move, you attack, you piss me off, I take your head, got it?" she held a teleport disk at his throat. It was a bluff, if she wouldn't take the girl's tongue then she wouldn't take his head, but hopefully he didn't know that. She just wasn't intimidating in pasties.

But she was hot, Shiro had to admit. Something about violence, leather, and near-naked girlfriends. Staring at her, he forgot why they'd been on such bad terms. "There are things I want to do to you now that I don't really want to wait for," he told Clarice.

Oh, now that was forward! "What the flying fuck?" she replied, baffled. Now was not the time for that! Completely abandoning her threats against electro-boy or whatever his name was, she stared at Shiro dumbfounded.

Electro boy took that moment to try to blast her. Ignoring Shiro, she kicked the electrokinetic in the nuts and turned to see who else was around. Fight baddies first. Fight stupid boyfriend second.

Shiro couldn't help but wince at Clarice's rather violent display of distaste at the electrokinetic. "Not to be disrespectful or anything . . ." he amended, waving his arms in a peaceful yet defensive manner. "I mean . . . hey, look over there!" He pointed at another young man (patron? employee? Shiro didn't really care, he was going to jail all the same) so was literally tearing through the crowd to get away. A feral. Damn it.

"Not to be disrespectful?" she yelled in the din, "Disrespectful? My god, how did you think that was respectful?" yay, a feral coming at them. Maybe he'd disembowel Shiro or knock some sense into him. Something.

"Fuck the feral!" she yelled, teleporting into the air and then dropping on his back and holding onto his hair for dear life. It was like riding one of those bucking bronco rides at carnivals, but with real pain.

"Isn't that the kind of stuff boyfriends and girlfriends are supposed to say to each other?" he asked, biting his tongue even as he did so. Nice going, Shiro. "'Port!" he cried, tossing another exploding fireball.

Right now she wasn't sure she trusted him not to molest her in the middle of the fight, but she trusted him in battle. Porting straight up, she fell back down to the ground, knocking someone down. Not someone fighting them. Alas, stupid bystanders.

"Not in the middle of a fight for your life!" she replied, getting knocked into a table by the feral. She was really ill-equipped to deal with this kind of shit right now.

"I'm just saying!" Shiro protested, charging over to the feral so he could pull him off Clarice. "I'm sorry, okay? I'm an idiot. I was just trying to compliment you. Damn." He tossed the feral aside and turned to Clarice, offering her what he hoped was a placating smile.

"You missed the point entirely," she informed him, kicking the lizard girl until she finally ran away. Damn, she was gonna have bruises and college started soon. That was going to be fun to explain, she just knew.

"Well, enlighten me, then." Shiro just held up a fist and the feral ran smack into it, breaking his nose. He fell to the ground clutching his face.

"Dorkwad," Clarice stared down at the feral before unleashing her anger on Shiro. They had run out of conscious baddies. "You don't say you want to have sex in the middle of a damned SWAT raid while we're fighting for our lives! Inappropriate time and place!"

"I thought it would lighten the mood a little," Shiro offered, though that was pretty much BS. He'd said it because it was true and he couldn't help himself. Poor impulse control. Can't blame him for being a nineteen year-old guy on a bit of a kick.

Closing her eyes, Clarice counted to ten in English and then again in Arabic. Opening her eyes, she smiled. "Oh, look! The SWAT team is headed over here. Let's pretend I'm completely clothed and not a complete wannabe-whore!" When embarrassed, smile.

"I don't think you're a whore," Shiro added helpfully. Or at least he thought it was helpful. "Um, here." He removed his leather vest and offered it to her. Now they were both half-clothed. That should make them both feel better.

Sighing dramatically, Clarice shrugged the jacket off and stalked towards the SWAT team. "I'm one of the undercover people," she told him, allowing him to wrap her in a blanket and escort her out of the building and away from Shiro.

Shiro frowned and shrugged his vest back. "Well, damn," he sighed as he got pulled back into the fray. Screwed up again. He was maintaining an excellent track record.