Mission Flesh Mechanic: Red October
Oct. 26th, 2006 05:04 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsX-Force finally discovers and faces down the source of all of the attacks; something stranger than they could every imagine.
The guardhouse at the main entrance of the complex hadn't been used for several weeks, and it showed. Dust lay heavy on the surfaces, and someone's meal, abandoned on one of the work stations, had gone decidedly furry and unappetizing. Amanda crawled out from under a desk where she'd been plugging in cables for Mark, coughing and sneezing several times. "I think we're good," she told Mark, digging through her pockets for a tissue and blowing dust out of her nose. "Want to test this out, make sure we're wired for sound?"
Natasha tapped on the top of the switch for a moment. "You will need to run on both your communications array and our comms channel. I will handle our forces and monitor your team to ensure proper coordination." Her English was flawless, with just a hint of a British accent. The tall, redheaded intelligence officer was an intimidating presence, with her piercing eyes and sharp features. She'd joined them to act as the field commander to the GRU forces Vazhin sent to assist, and her attitude was of one used to being obeyed.
Mark felt kind of funny wearing both a headset for the communications device on his head and the headphones connected to his iPod resting on his neck. But he'd opted for those rather than the earbuds so that if worse comes to worst, then he could hear music without having to put anything else in his ears, leaving him free to defend himself and still help coordinate.
Taking a seat at the small console, he flipped a couple of switches and grimaced at the burst of static that hit his ears. "Now I really feel like James Bond," he said as he adjusted the console, "What with the fighting old Soviet farts and all."
Dusting herself off, Amanda sat beside him, reaching for her own headset. "You can start ordering martinis at Silver," she said with a faint grin - the Russian woman intimidated the hell out of her and she didn't want to look like too much of an amateur.
"Okay, back-up system's online... Time to make sure everyone's managed to get their systems on and working." She looked pained for a minute. "Which means using those dumb names Rem-- 'Gambit' gave us."
"Can't wait to get fucked up when we're back on American land," Mark said quietly so only Amanda could hear. He hoped. He tapped a button on his headset and sat back. "DJ and Daytripper online," he said into his microphone. "Status check."
"I can't wait to do something horrible to our fearless field leader when we get back," she replied, equally quietly. "'Daytripper', I fucking ask you. At least yours makes sense." Obviously the rest of the team were amused, to judge by the snorts of laughter coming from 'Scarlet Witch' and 'Marrow'. "You're all very funny," she said a bit louder into the mic. "Have fun storming the bioweapons lab."
"Cypher and Marrow, reading you five by five, DJ," Doug replied over his comm. "So far, so good. No hostile contact. Would it be very Star Wars of me to say that I have a very bad feeling about this?"
"Copy Daytripper. Gambit, Winddancer, Tarot, Scarlet Witch and GRU Team 1 entering de complex."
Moving through the complex was like walking into a tomb; still and lifeless. Behind him, Remy could hear the GRU agents that Romanova had sent with them muttering in Russian, disquieted by the old cavernous chambers. Everywhere were red stencils on the dark green paint, marking off the now silent conduits and work areas. The group stopped at a door, and one of the agents rushed forward, pulling out a set of master keys and unlocking the complex system to the right of the frame. The panel came off, and they pumped a handle for a few minutes, repressurizing the system before hitting the open switch.
It was a combination of the heat and the smell that caused them all to recoil back. The hot wet air spilled over them, carrying with it the organic scent of rot. Remy swallowed heavily and stepped through the door.
"Dis is fucking unbelievable..." His voice trailed off as they joined them. This room, the size of a football field, had once been full of complex machinery; according to the records, a fabrication centre for Ignatova. Now, all of the machines were covered in fleshly growths; lurid pink and grey polyps that coated the surface and grew in strange shapes. Under their feet, a dank fluid ebbed, carrying the charnel scent.
"I would throw up, but I think I already threw up everything I have ever eaten." Marie-Ange said, in a low whisper. "Would anyone mind, when we get back, if I just remove all the food from the office that is not vegetarian? Because I think no meat for a while is a good idea." She tried not to breathe, at least, not much, and swallowed to prevent retching. "Maybe no food at all..."
It was now that Sofia was glad she had chosen her conservatively fashionable yet not priced high enough to feed a family in Africa for three years boots. "How delightfully squishy," she commented, leading Marie-Ange to her side and the benefits of air, and therefore scent, manipulation. "May we poke them?" There was an odd squelching noise, distorted by the altered air currents, and a shifting of shadows that answered the question for her.
"As long as you poke from a distance," Wanda muttered as her normally fairly steel like stomach attempted to stage a coup. These were smells that no one should ever have to endure. She was using the hex rings around her hands to provide a little bit of light but not much.
"Guess dis place isn't as dead as dey thought." Remy carefully circled a press that looked like it had since recent use, surrounded by shreds of flesh and dripping gore. He shifted and put his hand to his headset. "Romanova, you'd better tell Vazhin dat dis place is worse den we thought. DJ, tell Marrow and Cypher to be extra careful."
"Gotcha. Hey, Bones and Beauty," said Mark, flipping to Doug and Sarah's frequency. "Hear that? There is Imminent Danger. What we thought was bad? Yeah, turns out it's a picnic to what Gambit's seein' now. Good luck!"
"This place officially creeps me the hell out," Doug muttered, shifting the knapsack he had over his shoulders. The drab utilitarian blockiness of the 70s was depressing enough, but the strands of what appeared to be organic flesh cabling was something straight out of a nightmare. Doug promised himself that any creepy anime movies involving human-machine interaction were getting purged from his movie collection upon their return to the States. "It's a good thing I brought my own gear to jack in, because the computer equipment looks as obsolescent as the facility," he continued, half talking to Sarah and half talking to himself to keep from having a total freakout.
Muttering to himself. Great. "You're not terribly good at this whole 'quietly infiltrating the building' thing, are you?" Sarah had half a bone gripped in her hand, the other half still sticking bloodily out of her thigh. She walked beside him, unable to decide if he'd be safer with her in front of him or behind him. Probably neither.
Doug waved his hand at the cabling. "You really think she doesn't already know we're here? If I were a giant flesh computer..." he trailed off and shook his hands as if trying to get something off of them, "which, by the way, -ew-, I'd have sensors to warn me when I had uninvited guests."
"Yes, well that doesn't mean you need to announce us anyway." Doug's nervousness, not that she would ever admit it, seemed to be contagious. Walking around in the quiet made it worse. Sarah would have almost welcomed a good fight. Something to do besides waiting around for something to happen.
Behind them, the shuffling noise all but announced that they were not alone. From the wall, a thing; humanoid but almost featureless, detached itself from the wall with a wet sucking noise. It took two unsteady steps before turning, and starting to stagger up the hall at them.
"I had to open my big damn mouth, didn't I?" Doug asked rhetorically. "Marrow, you need-" he got out before a slightly different wet sucking noise came from beside him. Turning, he saw a pair of bones in her hands, and he nodded. "I'm betting not."
"Good call." Sarah rushed at it, bones in her hands swinging at what should have been the thing's head. It was hard to tell. The whole thing looked like a great big mass of muscle. The thing raised an arm to shield itself, and the bones connected with an audible -squish-.
Yum. She turned slightly, butting the blunt end of a bone into its abdomen. It fell back on the floor and struggled to right itself. She glanced back at Doug. "Where do we need to get you?"
There was a crackle over the comms, Amanda's voice coming faintly through the headset. "Cypher, Marrow, you need to get your arses to the mainframe." In the guardroom, Amanda was poring over a blueprint, Romanova leaning over her shoulder to point out the place. "You're not far off it, just follow the black cabling. If you can still see it." By all accounts, it was getting hard to navigate down there, with all the fleshy growths. "Keep an eye out - it's not going to let you get
there easily." A pause, then grudingly. "Daytripper out."
"So, who else thinks dis place feels like a--" There was a shuffle from the area around them, and they instinctively formed a circle as the creatures they'd dubbed 'meat spores' started to appear from the edges of the room. "--trap." Remy finished lamely, hoisting his staff.
As Remy hoisted his staff, one, identical in appearance if not weight, appeared in Marie-Ange's hands. "I have a bad feeling about this..." She said, echoing Remy.
"Why am I always fighting messy zombie things when you are around? This is the second time. It is starting to be a bad habit."
"Quick, someone answer that before I do." Sofia glanced quickly at the redheaded girl before stepping away, evening the ground. A breeze rose around her, tousling her hair and lifting her jacket away, flapping gently; unconscious and like breathing. "And who wants to bet I can't just suffocate these ones."
"Sadly, I think I will pass on the bet." Wanda let the light die away, unwilling to illuminate exactly how badly they were surrounded. "This has been, currently, the most disturbing case we have ever worked on. And I rather hope that we will never top this." Despite her tone, she'd fallen into a loose fighting stance, eyeing the creatures.
"Great. Now you just made certain dat we will." Remy sighed. "Stay near de centre, don't let dem separate us." Remy called out in Russian to the agents who had come with them. They had backed up to the door, obviously making sure to try and keep it clear of the creatures.
Smart men, he considered, before making a slash at the first meat spore. It shuddered under the blow but kept coming trying to grapple. Remy struck again, twice, each blow fatal a normal person, but earning nothing but tissue damage from the creature.
"Merde, dese things are humanoid but no vital points." He snapped shut his staff and went for his cards instead. If they couldn't be easily incapacitated, he'd have to go for the less subtle route of blasting them apart with energy.
As one of the golem-like spores approached, Marie-Ange struck it against the front of what would have been the throat, only slowing it for a moment. In that moment, she stepped back, ducking behind Remy. She needed the cover, for that second, to get her cards, and something that would do more than just the staff. "Which means we hack them to bits.." she said, swallowing against bile, and then, gripping a sword tightly, letting the other six fall to the ground with a clatter.
"Easier if they," Sofia started, a large slice of the spores lifting up off the ground, no longer able to move towards them, before continuing, "Stay put. And look. No hand gestures needed."
The red light got brighter for a second as Wanda concentrated, sending a ripple effect through the crowd as some of them toppled over one another, caught under equipment. "That was harder to do then
expected," she said, edging further away from the ones that were still up.
Despite Wanda's comment, the meat spores didn't seem to be very adapt at combat, attacking relying on mass more than anything. Remy's cards were explosively destructive, tearing large chunks out of them as they advanced. Even the fire support of the agents rent deep holes in their attack.
"{{Vassily, Misha, concentrate your fire on keeping that pass clear back to the passageway.}}" Natasha switched over from Russian to English. "Cypher, where are you on that computer patch? We have activity and powers spikes all over this entire complex. Watch your backs."
"Not going to let us get there easily. Understatement of the century," Doug subvocalized to himself as he and Sarah delved deeper into the complex. Several more of the large fleshy drones had emerged from the walls to block their path, each dispatched by Sarah's bone knives. As they approached where the plans had said the mainframe was, the drone attacks became more frequent.
Finally, though, they exited the hallway to a more open room, where the cabling met to form a node. Scraping aside a random bit of gore, Doug nodded. "Here it is." He pulled his laptop from the knapsack and quickly connected it to the port he had revealed. He spared a moment to look up at Sarah. "Just...keep them off me."
"That's the plan Doug." Of course, the moment he plugged in two drones broke free from the mass on the wall. They could hear a third form just outside in the hallway. Sarah grabbed another bone from her still bleeding shoulder. "Not to rush you, but I think she's really pissed off now."
"You think?" Doug snapped as he bent low over his keyboard, fingers flashing over the keys. "Come on, come on..." he muttered to himself as he began attempting to impose his will on the mainframe.
Never before had Doug seen code rewriting itself to deal with his intrusion techniques. All of his normal tricks found him shunted off into subsystems and down pathways newly constructed to keep him from the vital areas he was trying to get to.
Behind him, there was a tearing noise as Sarah embedded a bone into the shoulder of one of the meat spores and heaving, separating its arm completely from the truck of its body with a wet sound.
Doug prided himself on his hacking abilities. He knew that his powers gave him an edge over the average non-mutant hacker, but never before had he felt so completely outclassed, like a beginner martial artist attempting to land a punch on a grand master.
He unleashed preconstructed virii and worms into the system, only to see them quarantined between one blink of a cursor and the next. And then, before he could attack again, the vulnerable point he had aimed at was locked down behind a bristling firewall. Open communications ports closed in series like a string of green traffic signals suddenly flashing to red.
An unbelieving groan escaped Doug's lips as he hunkered down over his keyboard. Ignatova was fast. Blindingly fast. With the communications ports closed to him, his next avenue of attack was to
try and exploit systems resembling those communications ports. But what seemed like a good idea initially to Doug due to the hodgepodge nature of her systems rapidly failed to pan out because of the sheer -age- of those systems. The dichotomy was amazing, like the ancient parts of a Commodore 64 running at the 12.25 teraflop speed of Virginia Tech's System X.
"Okay, finesse isn't working, let's try brute force..." Doug murmured. Returning to the closed communications ports, he attempted to force them open using commands phrased in FORTRAN simple enough to work in the ancient RT-11 operating system. "Come on, come on..." he repeated. Another swing, another miss. The communication ports stayed shut tight. "Tvoyu 'mat!" he yelled in Russian.
All the while during his probing of Ignatova's systems, the Russian technopath had not been idle. Counterprobes snaked down the connection towards Doug's laptops, writhing serpentine heads striking
with massive force. Doug's vulnerabilities were practically nonexistent, but practically nonexistent was not the same as completely airtight.
It was mutant-enhanced savvy versus the lightning quickness of a machine, and Doug forced his fingers to dance faster across his keyboard. His attacks were a rapier, searching for the one chink in Ignatova's digital armor to strike through, while hers were the sweeping slashes of a zweihander, any one of which could end the engagement if it landed.
He tried some of the reported memory holes in the RT-11 OS, but nothing was there. Whatever it was Ignatova was using, it wasn't RT-11. He tried ANDOS, with a similar lack of progress. "Goddamit, she's written her own OS!" he exclaimed after a moment. It made a
serious amount of sense, however, given the Frankensteinian nature of her existence. It didn't help Doug to find a place to direct his attack.
A drop of sweat slid unnoticed down the side of Doug's face as his brain whirled, trying to think up his next move in a fight that didn't allow him the luxury of time to think. "Oh, god, this is such a bad idea, but it just might work..." he said as an idea hit him. Immersing himself in the patterns of Ignatova's custom OS and the programming language behind it, he pushed his power, trying to master its intricacies in mere moments. The events surrounding him dilated as he swam through lines of code.
Then, after a period of time that Doug could not have said whether it was seconds, minutes, or hours, Doug tried a new and radically different attack. Rather than attacking the hardware connections of Ignatova, he aimed at the software, trying to hack right into her brain. Switching fluidly from high-level language to assembler language to outright binary machine code, he tried his best to induce the mechanical equivalent of a cerebral aneurysm. He was oblivious to
the sweat now rolling down from his forehead, he was oblivious to the sounds of the comm in his ear, he was oblivious to Marrow's clash with the drones only feet away from him. He was in the zone.
And it -still- wasn't enough.
"Gambit, I have suspicious power fluctuations in your room. Look for something new to happen." Romanova cut in over the circuit.
After a few frantic minutes, the remaining meat spores simply collapsed around them, like puppets with their strings cut. The four mutants traded looks, trying to figure out what had just happened.
"Did we win?" Remy asked musingly, and was interrupted by a sudden rumble that shook the room. All four flailed to stay on their feet as the complex shuddered; the organic polyps quivering and pulsing. In front of them, and to their astonishment, the mass began to rise. Meat dripped off over metal, like a horrible web of tendons on a steel skeleton. The figure continued to rise, until it finally stood, a full twenty feet of flesh wrapped steel. The head swiveled towards the
mutants, red eyes glowing in the hybrid face.
There was a brief ping over the comms from Doug.
"Uh, guys... whoever guessed that's Ignatova wins the prize for this evening. Just don't ask me what the prize is."
"I hope it's not tentacles," came Mark's voice over the comms.
Marie-Ange could only watch in fear as the thing pulled itself together, whispering a almost silent prayer under her breath, and thumbing through her deck of cards. The thing was inhuman, a sick blend of machine parts and flesh, and yet, all too human in form, with arms and legs and a head, and even a crude 'face'.
Standing her ground, Wanda stared, stone faced, at the creature. Ignatova. Whatever was about to happen was not going to be fun or easy, that was for certain. As the team shifted, she started to study the strings attached, readying herself for the fight ahead.
"I have no words." Marie-Ange did, but they were all whispered prayers, asking for grace and luck to her and her cards. She flipped a card over, only to slid it back into the deck, only to do the same over and over, muttering under her breath. "The moon? no. The sun? No. Stars? No. None of these are any help..." She gave up, cutting the deck in her hand, and imaging again one of the swords. At least it was a weapon.
{{flesh:.:imperfect flesh:.:independence is counter to the security of the state:.:flesh for forms:.:master mould is Mastermold:.:perfection of thought and form:.:all equality is based on cruelty of purpose:.:violation of the collective good}} The voice boomed, tinny and electronic, from hidden speakers. The Russian was old-fashioned; corrupted.
Remy snapped out of the shock. He grabbed out his staff again and leapt towards the creature. "Scarlet Witch, Tarot! Lock up de legs, see if you can topple it! Winddancer, you're following me up!" He yelled as he closed, pivoting to strike at the exposed growths. The giant organic robot moved faster than he could imagine, outwitting his spatial sense to land a shuddering blow that knocked him aside. He rolled as he hit and was up again, only to barely avoid the six foot spike that grounded next to where his chest had been a half second before. How was this thing so damn fast?
"Moon, sun, and stars?" Mark repeated, too quietly to be heard over the comms but loud enough for Amanda and Natasha to look his way. "Aren't those . . ." Reaching over to take the map from Amanda, he half expected a lightbulb to illuminate over his head. "Tarot. Don't those cards represent, like, initiative or energy or something?"
Marie-Ange was trying, somewhat in vain, to conjure up enough chain from one of her cards to wrap around the thing's legs. It wasn't really working, and she spent more time dodging being stepped on then getting anything solid made. "Something like that!" She answered, tersely, finally getting -something-, although it was not chain, but a unrealistically long snake, the ouroboros, winding itself in coils.
Glancing over, Wanda nodded at Marie-Ange and darted in closer, making herself more of a target while the precog did her thing. If she could somehow tie up the legs, then Wanda could take out what passed for the knee caps. The strings were...unpleasant, unnatural and it was simply far easier to throw hex bolts at it. Melting flesh and rusting metal, a disgusting combination when thrown together but it was easier than trying to manipulate the angry strings.
The sounds of flesh melting and muscles bursting filtered through the comms, and made Mark flinch. "Oh, shit. Tarot, you're brilliant and I could kiss you. Do-Cypher, keep doing what you're doing. Marrow, Natasha, I need you. I think I know what to do." He hastily removed his headset and grabbed one of the smaller ones that those on the field were wearing. "Daytripper, take control. I'll be right back."
Amanda raised her eyebrow, but nodded as Mark headed for the door. "Take care out there, mate," she said, before turning her attention back to the comms. "All right, boys and girls, DJ's got himself a cunning plan. Hang in there, yeah?"
The Mastermold took a step, snapping the obstructions on her legs and swinging again at the mutants. Her blows hit with astonishing regularity, even people who are so often nearly impossible to hit. Remy had taken out a couple of the active sensors, but she wasn't slowing down. As they damaged bits, Ignatova's powers reconstructed the damage.
"Dis isn't working." Remy snarled, pivoting to let lose another card and receiving a lashing strike in response. He pinwheeled over, wiping the blood from his face as he staggered back to his feet.
{{individual action weakens the collective good:.:complex in conflict:.:hostile actions are counter to logical response:.:clear materials:.:focus to assimulation}}
The chant was followed by another set of attacks, and another hit to Sofia, who this time crashed into the just sorted Remy instead of the regular wall. "Bitch, the best part about your dying is that you'll have to shut up!" she yelled back at her, unceremoniously shoving the heel of her hand between Remy's ribs as she raised herself up and looked down at him. "Remember the back-up plan where we tried to reason with her? I think the part where she's
gone computer sociopathic means we'd better move on to 'C'."
Whenever the Mastermold took a step, it shook the ground, causing Wanda to fight to stay on her feet. She was alternating hex blasts from each hand, trying to eat away at the legs to knock it over but it just wasn't working. There was too much material and movement to allow one area to give.
Skidding to a stop as one of the legs passed right by her, she reached out and tried to get a handhold. If she could feed a hex blast directly through the flesh by touch it could potentially disrupt something. Unfortunately as she got into range, the creature shifted its leg and kicked,
sending Wanda flying through the air to crash into a series of metal containers.
"~Bloody fuck...~" she groaned, rolling out of the way of falling debris and trying to get another bead while she struggled to her feet.
Whether it was coiled serpents, or thick stone walls or small armies of skeletons, Marie-Ange couldn't so much conjure an image without it getting stomped on, kicked, or having one of her own teammates thrown through it.
Or worse, being shoved through one of her own images, dissolving it as she hit. She landed in a roll, covering her face with her arms, and scattering her deck of cards to the floor. "Merde..." she swore, and blindly reaching for the one at her fingertips and sending it's picture out towards the Mastermold.
The Mastermold tore through the image like smoke, extending the arm spike again to smash into the floor next to the mutants. Remy waved everyone back, and they all retreated away in a rough circle around Ignatova, who pivoted to select a foe.
"Options, anyone?" Remy asked, trying desperately to formulate a plan. It was just too fast, tracking all of them as they moved and strong enough to create a response instantly. All of the damage it had taken was sealed up and repaired, in a way reminiscent of Forge's abilities
to create machine, but in this case that strange organic hybrid. One thing that was sure was that unless they came up with something, Mastermold was going to kill all four of them.
"DJ, Marrow and Romanova are going after the power source, Gambit." Amanda cut on over the comms. She switched channels.
"Another two hundred metres after the door in front of you."
"The core should be just down ahead," Mark said to Natasha and Sarah after receiving directions from Amanda over the comms. The basement smelled like mildew growing on rancid meat, and it was sheer force of will that kept the contents of Mark's stomach in place. "There are not enough showers in the world to get this smell off me when we're done."
"If we do not hurry, the smell is literally the last thing you will worry about." The Russian woman was hoisting a silenced MP5 will remarkable familiarity, moving like a ghost behind them. Even Sarah didn't move as well in the vile environment, making both of them wonder where she had acquired her skills.
But Mark preferred not to think about that. Heaven willing, it would be only a matter of moments before Ignatova was taken down and he could return to New York and civilization. One hand reached into his pocket to withdraw his iPod, and he spared it a brief glance to make sure that the right song was cued up. Satisfied, he put it back into his pocket, but kept holding onto it, as if the little rectangle of metal and plastic were a lifeline.
"Trouble." Sarah muttered, shifting her grip on the bone club as they passed through a door. Behind them, meat spores were starting to appear, cutting off their escape. Romanova turned and almost casually lobbed a grenade through the doorway, and pushed them ahead as the explosion tore the crowd into pieces.
"That bought us another nine seconds. Move, little American!" She growled.
"I'm not . . ." Mark started to argue, but the intent and rather deadly look on Natasha's face was enough to shut him up. He picked up his pace, pushing himself down the next corridor and to their target: water and power control center. His face lit up. "You're going down, bitch," he muttered as he pressed the play button. Small blue lightning bolts sparked from his finger tips as techno blasted from the headphones around his neck.
Natasha and Sarah stopped shoulder to shoulder in the doorway. Her controlled fire tore up the meat spores as they came, weakening them enough that by the time they reached Sarah, they were simple prey for her bone knives and clubs. Still, there was only so long that they could last against the onslaught.
A tendril of something - Mark shuddered to think about what it actually was - reached from from the ground to wrap around his ankle. A single bolt fried it and it slithered away, leaving Mark to lament his now even dirtier designer jeans. He heard a steady throbbing sound, separate from his music's bass, and followed it to the main power supply. Which was buried beneath a writhing mass of absolute disgustingness. "Oh, you have got to be shitting me."
Amanda's voice broke over the comm. "DJ, Marrow, they're getting killed up here. Whatever you're doing, do it fast!"
"Please tell Gambit and Psylocke that they owe me a considerable Christmas bonus," said Mark before removing the earpiece and donning the headphones. He gulped and shoved his hands into the mass. "Good thing I'm vaccinated," he said, focusing on the music, using it to tap into the surrounding electromagnetic fields and manipulate them.
It was Angie who'd given him the idea. The cards she'd turned over - sun, moon, stars - all represent energy. They're fighting a gigantic flesh computer, and it needs energy. No energy, no computer. "Die, bitch," he grunted, pumping in just the right amount of energy to short circuit the power supply.
There was an arcing scream of power, and the room turned to negatives and afterimages from the bright flare. All around them the facility went dark. Natasha lifted her comm to her mouth. "Team One, the power have been cut. Take the nekulturny bitch down."
Remy wiped the blood from his face, staggering away from a spike and finding his bearings. "Power is down? Let's see if it did anything."
"Only one way to find out," Wanda said, scrapping unmentionables from the bottom of her boots. Slipping on her way out to the big fight just would not do. Instantly, two hex rings flared to life, giving everything an eery glow to it. "Ready when you lot are. I've a good scotch to drink when we get back, shame to keep it waiting."
Marie-Ange struggled to stand back up, limping and already showing bruises. "You're sharing." she said, pulling one last card out of the sleeve of her coat. Behind her, a white horse, and steel-armored knight appeared, lance at the ready, gleaming metal and clean coat of the horse a startling contrast to the gore and filth around them.
The respective powering ups of each of her partners cast Sofia's face in a myriad of strange shadows. "No fair. Next time I get to have the shining, exploding mutation," she commented, before a strong gust figure-eighted around the group, leaving just as soon as it had come, but with Sofia suddenly taller, her boots no longer quite touching the ground. "Who wants to give me something to drop on her head."
"Dat I can do." Remy said, grinning evilly. "Me."
He grabbed her wrist, and Sofia hoisted him into the air. The winds swirled around him, pushing both of them up into the air. With a gesture, Remy found himself flung into the air, to land approximately on the top of Ignatova's head. She swiped at him, but was moving slower. The loss of power must have hurt her. He only had a moment before she plucked him off, but it was enough time to smash his staff straight down and channel a kinetic burst through it. The blast caved out a section of the head, but she was still fighting as she tossed him into the far wall.
The knight that Marie-Ange had projected dropped his helmet down to cover his face. An unnecessary gesture, but her images always had a sense of the theatrical. Horse pawing at the ground silently, it took a step, and then charged forward, unnaturally fast, driving the knight's lance into the thickest part of one of Ignatova's legs before being destroyed by a thrashing arm. The horse, knight and lance winked out, leaving a gaping wound, and the leg unsteady and weak. Circling around so that she found herself behind the Mastermold, Sofia lowered herself, cautiously staying just out sight. Her jaw set, eyes narrowing, and she brought her hands up to the sides of her chest before thrusting them forward. The gale that created managed to hit Ignatova right at the back of the knee, sending her forward on to it as Sofia herself dropped the remaining feet to the ground. "So, occasionally I need hand gestures," she admitted, dusting herself off. As soon as the Mastermold's leg had crumbled, Wanda set off a volley of hex bolts at the midsection, trying to force the thing to bend even more. This time when the metal structure rusted and started to crack and the flesh started to be eaten away, it worked. A hole started to appear with each blast, causing the creature to tilt her upper body towards the ground.
"What'd I miss?" Mark asked breathlessly, having run up from the power control center to the main complex where the team was destroying Ignatova. "Oh snap. Gimme a piece of this." Since the first time he'd listened to them, Mark was very curious about Rammstein's effect on his mutation. As rock music, Mark manifested concussive force blasts. But more specifically, the hard industrial subgenre made him particularly destructive. He'd dented steel once. Attacking Ignatova with this music took out rather large chunks of her chest and sent her toppling to the ground. "Tetsuooooooooo!" he shouted, grinning madly.
Remy quelled the urge to smack Mark, preferring to be impressed that the man could bring down a twenty-foot tall robot. He’d have to get him into training with Ororo soon. The left leg was almost completely shattered, and their damage was no longer healed on the body. Mastermold was dying. Remy selected a handful of cards, charging them high and scattering the blasts up the chest and head. Between those, Wanda’s devilishly effective hex blasts and a sudden burst of lightning from one of Tarot’s cards, the robot thrashed wildly without any control.
"Back!" Romanova barked at them, and the team retreated from the struggling robot as the Russians hefted heavy weapons from cases. Two anti-armor propelled grenades smashed into the metal carcass, sending clouds of flesh and metal shrapnel up around it. The second one destroyed the head unit entirely. After a few minutes, the movement stopped. Remy tapped into the comms and had Doug confirm what he thought. There was no more activity in the facility. Ignatova/Mastermold was dead.
"{{So}}," Natasha fell into step beside him as they walked out of the facility. "{{Gambit. There used to be an assassin called Gambit in Europe. You would very much match his description, if you were old enough to work in Europe fifteen years ago.}}"
"{{Stranger things have happened.}}" His own Russian was perfect, but he switched over to English anyway. "You heard from Vazhin."
"Officially, this facility will be stripped, sterilized and destroyed. The loss of power shutdown the nutrient bath that sustained Ignatova’s brain, killing her around the same time her robot creation died. Unfortunately, it looks like the technology that she built relied on her powers to work, so none of her work has any value to us or anyone else." Natasha said, looking over the group as they filed out. "{{Your team is very strange, Gambit. And very good. Are you X-Men?}}"
"{{X-Men? They are heroes, Natasha. Do any of these people look like heroes to you?}}" Remy cocked a thumb at the group.
"{{No. They look like anything but.}}"
"{{Good, because that’s their job.}}" Remy said, as he left her and walked over to the group. "Good job, all of you. The helicopters will be here in a few minutes, and we’re going straight home. Take a couple of days off. You earned it." There was a general tired chorus of cheers, except for Doug. The younger man was uncharacteristically silent as he handed over a printout to Remy.
"De, what, log from de patch you had in?" Remy looked at the mass of computer code. He was actually a decent hand on a computer, although specialized to breaking security systems and normal encryption. He followed the timestamps down a minute or so past the power cut off, when just the barest amount of stored power remained, until he reached the line Doug had pointed out and frowned. "Doug, you keep an eye on dis."
Remy’s finger pointed at the single line beside the timestamp, which read only:
:.:revolution:.:to come around again:.:
The guardhouse at the main entrance of the complex hadn't been used for several weeks, and it showed. Dust lay heavy on the surfaces, and someone's meal, abandoned on one of the work stations, had gone decidedly furry and unappetizing. Amanda crawled out from under a desk where she'd been plugging in cables for Mark, coughing and sneezing several times. "I think we're good," she told Mark, digging through her pockets for a tissue and blowing dust out of her nose. "Want to test this out, make sure we're wired for sound?"
Natasha tapped on the top of the switch for a moment. "You will need to run on both your communications array and our comms channel. I will handle our forces and monitor your team to ensure proper coordination." Her English was flawless, with just a hint of a British accent. The tall, redheaded intelligence officer was an intimidating presence, with her piercing eyes and sharp features. She'd joined them to act as the field commander to the GRU forces Vazhin sent to assist, and her attitude was of one used to being obeyed.
Mark felt kind of funny wearing both a headset for the communications device on his head and the headphones connected to his iPod resting on his neck. But he'd opted for those rather than the earbuds so that if worse comes to worst, then he could hear music without having to put anything else in his ears, leaving him free to defend himself and still help coordinate.
Taking a seat at the small console, he flipped a couple of switches and grimaced at the burst of static that hit his ears. "Now I really feel like James Bond," he said as he adjusted the console, "What with the fighting old Soviet farts and all."
Dusting herself off, Amanda sat beside him, reaching for her own headset. "You can start ordering martinis at Silver," she said with a faint grin - the Russian woman intimidated the hell out of her and she didn't want to look like too much of an amateur.
"Okay, back-up system's online... Time to make sure everyone's managed to get their systems on and working." She looked pained for a minute. "Which means using those dumb names Rem-- 'Gambit' gave us."
"Can't wait to get fucked up when we're back on American land," Mark said quietly so only Amanda could hear. He hoped. He tapped a button on his headset and sat back. "DJ and Daytripper online," he said into his microphone. "Status check."
"I can't wait to do something horrible to our fearless field leader when we get back," she replied, equally quietly. "'Daytripper', I fucking ask you. At least yours makes sense." Obviously the rest of the team were amused, to judge by the snorts of laughter coming from 'Scarlet Witch' and 'Marrow'. "You're all very funny," she said a bit louder into the mic. "Have fun storming the bioweapons lab."
"Cypher and Marrow, reading you five by five, DJ," Doug replied over his comm. "So far, so good. No hostile contact. Would it be very Star Wars of me to say that I have a very bad feeling about this?"
"Copy Daytripper. Gambit, Winddancer, Tarot, Scarlet Witch and GRU Team 1 entering de complex."
Moving through the complex was like walking into a tomb; still and lifeless. Behind him, Remy could hear the GRU agents that Romanova had sent with them muttering in Russian, disquieted by the old cavernous chambers. Everywhere were red stencils on the dark green paint, marking off the now silent conduits and work areas. The group stopped at a door, and one of the agents rushed forward, pulling out a set of master keys and unlocking the complex system to the right of the frame. The panel came off, and they pumped a handle for a few minutes, repressurizing the system before hitting the open switch.
It was a combination of the heat and the smell that caused them all to recoil back. The hot wet air spilled over them, carrying with it the organic scent of rot. Remy swallowed heavily and stepped through the door.
"Dis is fucking unbelievable..." His voice trailed off as they joined them. This room, the size of a football field, had once been full of complex machinery; according to the records, a fabrication centre for Ignatova. Now, all of the machines were covered in fleshly growths; lurid pink and grey polyps that coated the surface and grew in strange shapes. Under their feet, a dank fluid ebbed, carrying the charnel scent.
"I would throw up, but I think I already threw up everything I have ever eaten." Marie-Ange said, in a low whisper. "Would anyone mind, when we get back, if I just remove all the food from the office that is not vegetarian? Because I think no meat for a while is a good idea." She tried not to breathe, at least, not much, and swallowed to prevent retching. "Maybe no food at all..."
It was now that Sofia was glad she had chosen her conservatively fashionable yet not priced high enough to feed a family in Africa for three years boots. "How delightfully squishy," she commented, leading Marie-Ange to her side and the benefits of air, and therefore scent, manipulation. "May we poke them?" There was an odd squelching noise, distorted by the altered air currents, and a shifting of shadows that answered the question for her.
"As long as you poke from a distance," Wanda muttered as her normally fairly steel like stomach attempted to stage a coup. These were smells that no one should ever have to endure. She was using the hex rings around her hands to provide a little bit of light but not much.
"Guess dis place isn't as dead as dey thought." Remy carefully circled a press that looked like it had since recent use, surrounded by shreds of flesh and dripping gore. He shifted and put his hand to his headset. "Romanova, you'd better tell Vazhin dat dis place is worse den we thought. DJ, tell Marrow and Cypher to be extra careful."
"Gotcha. Hey, Bones and Beauty," said Mark, flipping to Doug and Sarah's frequency. "Hear that? There is Imminent Danger. What we thought was bad? Yeah, turns out it's a picnic to what Gambit's seein' now. Good luck!"
"This place officially creeps me the hell out," Doug muttered, shifting the knapsack he had over his shoulders. The drab utilitarian blockiness of the 70s was depressing enough, but the strands of what appeared to be organic flesh cabling was something straight out of a nightmare. Doug promised himself that any creepy anime movies involving human-machine interaction were getting purged from his movie collection upon their return to the States. "It's a good thing I brought my own gear to jack in, because the computer equipment looks as obsolescent as the facility," he continued, half talking to Sarah and half talking to himself to keep from having a total freakout.
Muttering to himself. Great. "You're not terribly good at this whole 'quietly infiltrating the building' thing, are you?" Sarah had half a bone gripped in her hand, the other half still sticking bloodily out of her thigh. She walked beside him, unable to decide if he'd be safer with her in front of him or behind him. Probably neither.
Doug waved his hand at the cabling. "You really think she doesn't already know we're here? If I were a giant flesh computer..." he trailed off and shook his hands as if trying to get something off of them, "which, by the way, -ew-, I'd have sensors to warn me when I had uninvited guests."
"Yes, well that doesn't mean you need to announce us anyway." Doug's nervousness, not that she would ever admit it, seemed to be contagious. Walking around in the quiet made it worse. Sarah would have almost welcomed a good fight. Something to do besides waiting around for something to happen.
Behind them, the shuffling noise all but announced that they were not alone. From the wall, a thing; humanoid but almost featureless, detached itself from the wall with a wet sucking noise. It took two unsteady steps before turning, and starting to stagger up the hall at them.
"I had to open my big damn mouth, didn't I?" Doug asked rhetorically. "Marrow, you need-" he got out before a slightly different wet sucking noise came from beside him. Turning, he saw a pair of bones in her hands, and he nodded. "I'm betting not."
"Good call." Sarah rushed at it, bones in her hands swinging at what should have been the thing's head. It was hard to tell. The whole thing looked like a great big mass of muscle. The thing raised an arm to shield itself, and the bones connected with an audible -squish-.
Yum. She turned slightly, butting the blunt end of a bone into its abdomen. It fell back on the floor and struggled to right itself. She glanced back at Doug. "Where do we need to get you?"
There was a crackle over the comms, Amanda's voice coming faintly through the headset. "Cypher, Marrow, you need to get your arses to the mainframe." In the guardroom, Amanda was poring over a blueprint, Romanova leaning over her shoulder to point out the place. "You're not far off it, just follow the black cabling. If you can still see it." By all accounts, it was getting hard to navigate down there, with all the fleshy growths. "Keep an eye out - it's not going to let you get
there easily." A pause, then grudingly. "Daytripper out."
"So, who else thinks dis place feels like a--" There was a shuffle from the area around them, and they instinctively formed a circle as the creatures they'd dubbed 'meat spores' started to appear from the edges of the room. "--trap." Remy finished lamely, hoisting his staff.
As Remy hoisted his staff, one, identical in appearance if not weight, appeared in Marie-Ange's hands. "I have a bad feeling about this..." She said, echoing Remy.
"Why am I always fighting messy zombie things when you are around? This is the second time. It is starting to be a bad habit."
"Quick, someone answer that before I do." Sofia glanced quickly at the redheaded girl before stepping away, evening the ground. A breeze rose around her, tousling her hair and lifting her jacket away, flapping gently; unconscious and like breathing. "And who wants to bet I can't just suffocate these ones."
"Sadly, I think I will pass on the bet." Wanda let the light die away, unwilling to illuminate exactly how badly they were surrounded. "This has been, currently, the most disturbing case we have ever worked on. And I rather hope that we will never top this." Despite her tone, she'd fallen into a loose fighting stance, eyeing the creatures.
"Great. Now you just made certain dat we will." Remy sighed. "Stay near de centre, don't let dem separate us." Remy called out in Russian to the agents who had come with them. They had backed up to the door, obviously making sure to try and keep it clear of the creatures.
Smart men, he considered, before making a slash at the first meat spore. It shuddered under the blow but kept coming trying to grapple. Remy struck again, twice, each blow fatal a normal person, but earning nothing but tissue damage from the creature.
"Merde, dese things are humanoid but no vital points." He snapped shut his staff and went for his cards instead. If they couldn't be easily incapacitated, he'd have to go for the less subtle route of blasting them apart with energy.
As one of the golem-like spores approached, Marie-Ange struck it against the front of what would have been the throat, only slowing it for a moment. In that moment, she stepped back, ducking behind Remy. She needed the cover, for that second, to get her cards, and something that would do more than just the staff. "Which means we hack them to bits.." she said, swallowing against bile, and then, gripping a sword tightly, letting the other six fall to the ground with a clatter.
"Easier if they," Sofia started, a large slice of the spores lifting up off the ground, no longer able to move towards them, before continuing, "Stay put. And look. No hand gestures needed."
The red light got brighter for a second as Wanda concentrated, sending a ripple effect through the crowd as some of them toppled over one another, caught under equipment. "That was harder to do then
expected," she said, edging further away from the ones that were still up.
Despite Wanda's comment, the meat spores didn't seem to be very adapt at combat, attacking relying on mass more than anything. Remy's cards were explosively destructive, tearing large chunks out of them as they advanced. Even the fire support of the agents rent deep holes in their attack.
"{{Vassily, Misha, concentrate your fire on keeping that pass clear back to the passageway.}}" Natasha switched over from Russian to English. "Cypher, where are you on that computer patch? We have activity and powers spikes all over this entire complex. Watch your backs."
"Not going to let us get there easily. Understatement of the century," Doug subvocalized to himself as he and Sarah delved deeper into the complex. Several more of the large fleshy drones had emerged from the walls to block their path, each dispatched by Sarah's bone knives. As they approached where the plans had said the mainframe was, the drone attacks became more frequent.
Finally, though, they exited the hallway to a more open room, where the cabling met to form a node. Scraping aside a random bit of gore, Doug nodded. "Here it is." He pulled his laptop from the knapsack and quickly connected it to the port he had revealed. He spared a moment to look up at Sarah. "Just...keep them off me."
"That's the plan Doug." Of course, the moment he plugged in two drones broke free from the mass on the wall. They could hear a third form just outside in the hallway. Sarah grabbed another bone from her still bleeding shoulder. "Not to rush you, but I think she's really pissed off now."
"You think?" Doug snapped as he bent low over his keyboard, fingers flashing over the keys. "Come on, come on..." he muttered to himself as he began attempting to impose his will on the mainframe.
Never before had Doug seen code rewriting itself to deal with his intrusion techniques. All of his normal tricks found him shunted off into subsystems and down pathways newly constructed to keep him from the vital areas he was trying to get to.
Behind him, there was a tearing noise as Sarah embedded a bone into the shoulder of one of the meat spores and heaving, separating its arm completely from the truck of its body with a wet sound.
Doug prided himself on his hacking abilities. He knew that his powers gave him an edge over the average non-mutant hacker, but never before had he felt so completely outclassed, like a beginner martial artist attempting to land a punch on a grand master.
He unleashed preconstructed virii and worms into the system, only to see them quarantined between one blink of a cursor and the next. And then, before he could attack again, the vulnerable point he had aimed at was locked down behind a bristling firewall. Open communications ports closed in series like a string of green traffic signals suddenly flashing to red.
An unbelieving groan escaped Doug's lips as he hunkered down over his keyboard. Ignatova was fast. Blindingly fast. With the communications ports closed to him, his next avenue of attack was to
try and exploit systems resembling those communications ports. But what seemed like a good idea initially to Doug due to the hodgepodge nature of her systems rapidly failed to pan out because of the sheer -age- of those systems. The dichotomy was amazing, like the ancient parts of a Commodore 64 running at the 12.25 teraflop speed of Virginia Tech's System X.
"Okay, finesse isn't working, let's try brute force..." Doug murmured. Returning to the closed communications ports, he attempted to force them open using commands phrased in FORTRAN simple enough to work in the ancient RT-11 operating system. "Come on, come on..." he repeated. Another swing, another miss. The communication ports stayed shut tight. "Tvoyu 'mat!" he yelled in Russian.
All the while during his probing of Ignatova's systems, the Russian technopath had not been idle. Counterprobes snaked down the connection towards Doug's laptops, writhing serpentine heads striking
with massive force. Doug's vulnerabilities were practically nonexistent, but practically nonexistent was not the same as completely airtight.
It was mutant-enhanced savvy versus the lightning quickness of a machine, and Doug forced his fingers to dance faster across his keyboard. His attacks were a rapier, searching for the one chink in Ignatova's digital armor to strike through, while hers were the sweeping slashes of a zweihander, any one of which could end the engagement if it landed.
He tried some of the reported memory holes in the RT-11 OS, but nothing was there. Whatever it was Ignatova was using, it wasn't RT-11. He tried ANDOS, with a similar lack of progress. "Goddamit, she's written her own OS!" he exclaimed after a moment. It made a
serious amount of sense, however, given the Frankensteinian nature of her existence. It didn't help Doug to find a place to direct his attack.
A drop of sweat slid unnoticed down the side of Doug's face as his brain whirled, trying to think up his next move in a fight that didn't allow him the luxury of time to think. "Oh, god, this is such a bad idea, but it just might work..." he said as an idea hit him. Immersing himself in the patterns of Ignatova's custom OS and the programming language behind it, he pushed his power, trying to master its intricacies in mere moments. The events surrounding him dilated as he swam through lines of code.
Then, after a period of time that Doug could not have said whether it was seconds, minutes, or hours, Doug tried a new and radically different attack. Rather than attacking the hardware connections of Ignatova, he aimed at the software, trying to hack right into her brain. Switching fluidly from high-level language to assembler language to outright binary machine code, he tried his best to induce the mechanical equivalent of a cerebral aneurysm. He was oblivious to
the sweat now rolling down from his forehead, he was oblivious to the sounds of the comm in his ear, he was oblivious to Marrow's clash with the drones only feet away from him. He was in the zone.
And it -still- wasn't enough.
"Gambit, I have suspicious power fluctuations in your room. Look for something new to happen." Romanova cut in over the circuit.
After a few frantic minutes, the remaining meat spores simply collapsed around them, like puppets with their strings cut. The four mutants traded looks, trying to figure out what had just happened.
"Did we win?" Remy asked musingly, and was interrupted by a sudden rumble that shook the room. All four flailed to stay on their feet as the complex shuddered; the organic polyps quivering and pulsing. In front of them, and to their astonishment, the mass began to rise. Meat dripped off over metal, like a horrible web of tendons on a steel skeleton. The figure continued to rise, until it finally stood, a full twenty feet of flesh wrapped steel. The head swiveled towards the
mutants, red eyes glowing in the hybrid face.
There was a brief ping over the comms from Doug.
"Uh, guys... whoever guessed that's Ignatova wins the prize for this evening. Just don't ask me what the prize is."
"I hope it's not tentacles," came Mark's voice over the comms.
Marie-Ange could only watch in fear as the thing pulled itself together, whispering a almost silent prayer under her breath, and thumbing through her deck of cards. The thing was inhuman, a sick blend of machine parts and flesh, and yet, all too human in form, with arms and legs and a head, and even a crude 'face'.
Standing her ground, Wanda stared, stone faced, at the creature. Ignatova. Whatever was about to happen was not going to be fun or easy, that was for certain. As the team shifted, she started to study the strings attached, readying herself for the fight ahead.
"I have no words." Marie-Ange did, but they were all whispered prayers, asking for grace and luck to her and her cards. She flipped a card over, only to slid it back into the deck, only to do the same over and over, muttering under her breath. "The moon? no. The sun? No. Stars? No. None of these are any help..." She gave up, cutting the deck in her hand, and imaging again one of the swords. At least it was a weapon.
{{flesh:.:imperfect flesh:.:independence is counter to the security of the state:.:flesh for forms:.:master mould is Mastermold:.:perfection of thought and form:.:all equality is based on cruelty of purpose:.:violation of the collective good}} The voice boomed, tinny and electronic, from hidden speakers. The Russian was old-fashioned; corrupted.
Remy snapped out of the shock. He grabbed out his staff again and leapt towards the creature. "Scarlet Witch, Tarot! Lock up de legs, see if you can topple it! Winddancer, you're following me up!" He yelled as he closed, pivoting to strike at the exposed growths. The giant organic robot moved faster than he could imagine, outwitting his spatial sense to land a shuddering blow that knocked him aside. He rolled as he hit and was up again, only to barely avoid the six foot spike that grounded next to where his chest had been a half second before. How was this thing so damn fast?
"Moon, sun, and stars?" Mark repeated, too quietly to be heard over the comms but loud enough for Amanda and Natasha to look his way. "Aren't those . . ." Reaching over to take the map from Amanda, he half expected a lightbulb to illuminate over his head. "Tarot. Don't those cards represent, like, initiative or energy or something?"
Marie-Ange was trying, somewhat in vain, to conjure up enough chain from one of her cards to wrap around the thing's legs. It wasn't really working, and she spent more time dodging being stepped on then getting anything solid made. "Something like that!" She answered, tersely, finally getting -something-, although it was not chain, but a unrealistically long snake, the ouroboros, winding itself in coils.
Glancing over, Wanda nodded at Marie-Ange and darted in closer, making herself more of a target while the precog did her thing. If she could somehow tie up the legs, then Wanda could take out what passed for the knee caps. The strings were...unpleasant, unnatural and it was simply far easier to throw hex bolts at it. Melting flesh and rusting metal, a disgusting combination when thrown together but it was easier than trying to manipulate the angry strings.
The sounds of flesh melting and muscles bursting filtered through the comms, and made Mark flinch. "Oh, shit. Tarot, you're brilliant and I could kiss you. Do-Cypher, keep doing what you're doing. Marrow, Natasha, I need you. I think I know what to do." He hastily removed his headset and grabbed one of the smaller ones that those on the field were wearing. "Daytripper, take control. I'll be right back."
Amanda raised her eyebrow, but nodded as Mark headed for the door. "Take care out there, mate," she said, before turning her attention back to the comms. "All right, boys and girls, DJ's got himself a cunning plan. Hang in there, yeah?"
The Mastermold took a step, snapping the obstructions on her legs and swinging again at the mutants. Her blows hit with astonishing regularity, even people who are so often nearly impossible to hit. Remy had taken out a couple of the active sensors, but she wasn't slowing down. As they damaged bits, Ignatova's powers reconstructed the damage.
"Dis isn't working." Remy snarled, pivoting to let lose another card and receiving a lashing strike in response. He pinwheeled over, wiping the blood from his face as he staggered back to his feet.
{{individual action weakens the collective good:.:complex in conflict:.:hostile actions are counter to logical response:.:clear materials:.:focus to assimulation}}
The chant was followed by another set of attacks, and another hit to Sofia, who this time crashed into the just sorted Remy instead of the regular wall. "Bitch, the best part about your dying is that you'll have to shut up!" she yelled back at her, unceremoniously shoving the heel of her hand between Remy's ribs as she raised herself up and looked down at him. "Remember the back-up plan where we tried to reason with her? I think the part where she's
gone computer sociopathic means we'd better move on to 'C'."
Whenever the Mastermold took a step, it shook the ground, causing Wanda to fight to stay on her feet. She was alternating hex blasts from each hand, trying to eat away at the legs to knock it over but it just wasn't working. There was too much material and movement to allow one area to give.
Skidding to a stop as one of the legs passed right by her, she reached out and tried to get a handhold. If she could feed a hex blast directly through the flesh by touch it could potentially disrupt something. Unfortunately as she got into range, the creature shifted its leg and kicked,
sending Wanda flying through the air to crash into a series of metal containers.
"~Bloody fuck...~" she groaned, rolling out of the way of falling debris and trying to get another bead while she struggled to her feet.
Whether it was coiled serpents, or thick stone walls or small armies of skeletons, Marie-Ange couldn't so much conjure an image without it getting stomped on, kicked, or having one of her own teammates thrown through it.
Or worse, being shoved through one of her own images, dissolving it as she hit. She landed in a roll, covering her face with her arms, and scattering her deck of cards to the floor. "Merde..." she swore, and blindly reaching for the one at her fingertips and sending it's picture out towards the Mastermold.
The Mastermold tore through the image like smoke, extending the arm spike again to smash into the floor next to the mutants. Remy waved everyone back, and they all retreated away in a rough circle around Ignatova, who pivoted to select a foe.
"Options, anyone?" Remy asked, trying desperately to formulate a plan. It was just too fast, tracking all of them as they moved and strong enough to create a response instantly. All of the damage it had taken was sealed up and repaired, in a way reminiscent of Forge's abilities
to create machine, but in this case that strange organic hybrid. One thing that was sure was that unless they came up with something, Mastermold was going to kill all four of them.
"DJ, Marrow and Romanova are going after the power source, Gambit." Amanda cut on over the comms. She switched channels.
"Another two hundred metres after the door in front of you."
"The core should be just down ahead," Mark said to Natasha and Sarah after receiving directions from Amanda over the comms. The basement smelled like mildew growing on rancid meat, and it was sheer force of will that kept the contents of Mark's stomach in place. "There are not enough showers in the world to get this smell off me when we're done."
"If we do not hurry, the smell is literally the last thing you will worry about." The Russian woman was hoisting a silenced MP5 will remarkable familiarity, moving like a ghost behind them. Even Sarah didn't move as well in the vile environment, making both of them wonder where she had acquired her skills.
But Mark preferred not to think about that. Heaven willing, it would be only a matter of moments before Ignatova was taken down and he could return to New York and civilization. One hand reached into his pocket to withdraw his iPod, and he spared it a brief glance to make sure that the right song was cued up. Satisfied, he put it back into his pocket, but kept holding onto it, as if the little rectangle of metal and plastic were a lifeline.
"Trouble." Sarah muttered, shifting her grip on the bone club as they passed through a door. Behind them, meat spores were starting to appear, cutting off their escape. Romanova turned and almost casually lobbed a grenade through the doorway, and pushed them ahead as the explosion tore the crowd into pieces.
"That bought us another nine seconds. Move, little American!" She growled.
"I'm not . . ." Mark started to argue, but the intent and rather deadly look on Natasha's face was enough to shut him up. He picked up his pace, pushing himself down the next corridor and to their target: water and power control center. His face lit up. "You're going down, bitch," he muttered as he pressed the play button. Small blue lightning bolts sparked from his finger tips as techno blasted from the headphones around his neck.
Natasha and Sarah stopped shoulder to shoulder in the doorway. Her controlled fire tore up the meat spores as they came, weakening them enough that by the time they reached Sarah, they were simple prey for her bone knives and clubs. Still, there was only so long that they could last against the onslaught.
A tendril of something - Mark shuddered to think about what it actually was - reached from from the ground to wrap around his ankle. A single bolt fried it and it slithered away, leaving Mark to lament his now even dirtier designer jeans. He heard a steady throbbing sound, separate from his music's bass, and followed it to the main power supply. Which was buried beneath a writhing mass of absolute disgustingness. "Oh, you have got to be shitting me."
Amanda's voice broke over the comm. "DJ, Marrow, they're getting killed up here. Whatever you're doing, do it fast!"
"Please tell Gambit and Psylocke that they owe me a considerable Christmas bonus," said Mark before removing the earpiece and donning the headphones. He gulped and shoved his hands into the mass. "Good thing I'm vaccinated," he said, focusing on the music, using it to tap into the surrounding electromagnetic fields and manipulate them.
It was Angie who'd given him the idea. The cards she'd turned over - sun, moon, stars - all represent energy. They're fighting a gigantic flesh computer, and it needs energy. No energy, no computer. "Die, bitch," he grunted, pumping in just the right amount of energy to short circuit the power supply.
There was an arcing scream of power, and the room turned to negatives and afterimages from the bright flare. All around them the facility went dark. Natasha lifted her comm to her mouth. "Team One, the power have been cut. Take the nekulturny bitch down."
Remy wiped the blood from his face, staggering away from a spike and finding his bearings. "Power is down? Let's see if it did anything."
"Only one way to find out," Wanda said, scrapping unmentionables from the bottom of her boots. Slipping on her way out to the big fight just would not do. Instantly, two hex rings flared to life, giving everything an eery glow to it. "Ready when you lot are. I've a good scotch to drink when we get back, shame to keep it waiting."
Marie-Ange struggled to stand back up, limping and already showing bruises. "You're sharing." she said, pulling one last card out of the sleeve of her coat. Behind her, a white horse, and steel-armored knight appeared, lance at the ready, gleaming metal and clean coat of the horse a startling contrast to the gore and filth around them.
The respective powering ups of each of her partners cast Sofia's face in a myriad of strange shadows. "No fair. Next time I get to have the shining, exploding mutation," she commented, before a strong gust figure-eighted around the group, leaving just as soon as it had come, but with Sofia suddenly taller, her boots no longer quite touching the ground. "Who wants to give me something to drop on her head."
"Dat I can do." Remy said, grinning evilly. "Me."
He grabbed her wrist, and Sofia hoisted him into the air. The winds swirled around him, pushing both of them up into the air. With a gesture, Remy found himself flung into the air, to land approximately on the top of Ignatova's head. She swiped at him, but was moving slower. The loss of power must have hurt her. He only had a moment before she plucked him off, but it was enough time to smash his staff straight down and channel a kinetic burst through it. The blast caved out a section of the head, but she was still fighting as she tossed him into the far wall.
The knight that Marie-Ange had projected dropped his helmet down to cover his face. An unnecessary gesture, but her images always had a sense of the theatrical. Horse pawing at the ground silently, it took a step, and then charged forward, unnaturally fast, driving the knight's lance into the thickest part of one of Ignatova's legs before being destroyed by a thrashing arm. The horse, knight and lance winked out, leaving a gaping wound, and the leg unsteady and weak. Circling around so that she found herself behind the Mastermold, Sofia lowered herself, cautiously staying just out sight. Her jaw set, eyes narrowing, and she brought her hands up to the sides of her chest before thrusting them forward. The gale that created managed to hit Ignatova right at the back of the knee, sending her forward on to it as Sofia herself dropped the remaining feet to the ground. "So, occasionally I need hand gestures," she admitted, dusting herself off. As soon as the Mastermold's leg had crumbled, Wanda set off a volley of hex bolts at the midsection, trying to force the thing to bend even more. This time when the metal structure rusted and started to crack and the flesh started to be eaten away, it worked. A hole started to appear with each blast, causing the creature to tilt her upper body towards the ground.
"What'd I miss?" Mark asked breathlessly, having run up from the power control center to the main complex where the team was destroying Ignatova. "Oh snap. Gimme a piece of this." Since the first time he'd listened to them, Mark was very curious about Rammstein's effect on his mutation. As rock music, Mark manifested concussive force blasts. But more specifically, the hard industrial subgenre made him particularly destructive. He'd dented steel once. Attacking Ignatova with this music took out rather large chunks of her chest and sent her toppling to the ground. "Tetsuooooooooo!" he shouted, grinning madly.
Remy quelled the urge to smack Mark, preferring to be impressed that the man could bring down a twenty-foot tall robot. He’d have to get him into training with Ororo soon. The left leg was almost completely shattered, and their damage was no longer healed on the body. Mastermold was dying. Remy selected a handful of cards, charging them high and scattering the blasts up the chest and head. Between those, Wanda’s devilishly effective hex blasts and a sudden burst of lightning from one of Tarot’s cards, the robot thrashed wildly without any control.
"Back!" Romanova barked at them, and the team retreated from the struggling robot as the Russians hefted heavy weapons from cases. Two anti-armor propelled grenades smashed into the metal carcass, sending clouds of flesh and metal shrapnel up around it. The second one destroyed the head unit entirely. After a few minutes, the movement stopped. Remy tapped into the comms and had Doug confirm what he thought. There was no more activity in the facility. Ignatova/Mastermold was dead.
"{{So}}," Natasha fell into step beside him as they walked out of the facility. "{{Gambit. There used to be an assassin called Gambit in Europe. You would very much match his description, if you were old enough to work in Europe fifteen years ago.}}"
"{{Stranger things have happened.}}" His own Russian was perfect, but he switched over to English anyway. "You heard from Vazhin."
"Officially, this facility will be stripped, sterilized and destroyed. The loss of power shutdown the nutrient bath that sustained Ignatova’s brain, killing her around the same time her robot creation died. Unfortunately, it looks like the technology that she built relied on her powers to work, so none of her work has any value to us or anyone else." Natasha said, looking over the group as they filed out. "{{Your team is very strange, Gambit. And very good. Are you X-Men?}}"
"{{X-Men? They are heroes, Natasha. Do any of these people look like heroes to you?}}" Remy cocked a thumb at the group.
"{{No. They look like anything but.}}"
"{{Good, because that’s their job.}}" Remy said, as he left her and walked over to the group. "Good job, all of you. The helicopters will be here in a few minutes, and we’re going straight home. Take a couple of days off. You earned it." There was a general tired chorus of cheers, except for Doug. The younger man was uncharacteristically silent as he handed over a printout to Remy.
"De, what, log from de patch you had in?" Remy looked at the mass of computer code. He was actually a decent hand on a computer, although specialized to breaking security systems and normal encryption. He followed the timestamps down a minute or so past the power cut off, when just the barest amount of stored power remained, until he reached the line Doug had pointed out and frowned. "Doug, you keep an eye on dis."
Remy’s finger pointed at the single line beside the timestamp, which read only:
:.:revolution:.:to come around again:.:
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Date: 2006-10-26 11:18 pm (UTC)Ruined the mood.