Epiphany Frosts: The Assault
Jan. 16th, 2007 12:05 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsThe X-Men go in. Nathan directs Angelo to a safe exit, but he and Samie run into a little trouble after all. Fortunately, she's a mean hand with a fire extinguisher, and once he sees her out, Angelo turns out to join his team. Marie, Cain and Garrison rescue the hostages, tackling Saidullayev's mutant allies and saving the lives of everyone still inside the conference hall. It's left to Sam and Angelo to pull off a last-minute unexpected save, however, as Scott gets word that Saidullayev's people had a last-resort bomb in the basement. Meanwhile, Nathan, Jean, and Ororo go after a fleeing Saidullayev, and it gets messy.
#Angelo.# It was Nathan's voice again, sharper and more tense than it had been the last time. #We're breaching the building. Get up, take Samie, and go down the back fire stairs - down to the end of the hall and to your right. Jean and I are directing some of the other people hiding out in rooms to do the same - the police are expecting you. Just keep your hands in sight, and move, fast.#
What Angelo sent back wasn't verbal, just a quick wordless feeling of assent, as he stood up quickly. "Samie? It's time to go. They're about to come in, we have to get out."
Samie rose, moving a little stiffly. They'd both been sitting there for a few too many hours. "I'll follow you," she said, her voice hushed and strained.
He nodded. "We're goin' down the back fire stairs. The cops out there know we're comin', but keep your hands out."
They headed out into the hall, as quietly as they could. Samie's expression tensed at the sight of the two bodies on the floor several doors down, but she looked away, following Angelo as he led her in the other direction.
Angelo hadn't spared the bodies more than a glance, but his own face was strained as they kept walking. "It's goin' to be okay," he assured her quietly.
They reached the stairs without incident and started down. On the floor below, the door flew open - thankfully, to reveal a terrified-looking older woman who shrieked softly at them and then ran down the stairs before either Angelo or Samie could say anything to reassure her.
At least she was going the right way, and no one was likely to take her for a terrorist when she was so obviously scared. "...right then. We keep goin'."
They made it three more floors down before they saw anyone else. The door opened, and this time, it was clearly not a hostage. A young man clad in black, maybe not much older than Angelo, stopped and stared at him for a startled instant, his gun dipping downwards.
Angelo stepped instantly in front of Samie, then took advantage of the young man's hesitation to lunge forward at him, trying to grab the gun before he brought it back up.
The young terrorist swore, wrestling with Angelo for the gun. He spat more words in what had to be Chechen, sounding half-panicked, half-threatening.
Angelo had the upper hand, and managed to slam the terrorist back into the wall, pinning him for a few seconds. It was long enough to get the gun out of his hand, at least.
The young terrorist did clearly have some training in hand-to-hand, though, and the wrestling match might have turned into something considerably more serious. But that unfortunate eventuality was abruptly and quite comprehensively forestalled by the fire extinguisher that smashed into the side of the young terrorist's head. He sagged, and Angelo turned to see Samie blinking at him, looking rather taken aback.
He stared at her for a long few moments, then grinned a little sickly. "...well, that told him.... thanks." The last was genuinely sincere, if still a little dazed, and he turned to pick up the young terrorist and settle him on his shoulder. It looked like he'd need medical attention, and he could hand him over once they got out.
"He'll live." Samie's voice was soft, but sounded a little wild. "I think. Um... why not just leave him there?"
"Because he might not, if we leave him an' it takes them too long to get up here," Angelo said grimly. "An' because in another life, I could've ended up not so far different from him."
--
They had run into the police near the first floor, and Angelo had made use of his limited Russian to try and explain that yes, the person he was carrying was indeed one of the terrorists. Samie had turned on the waterworks - quite deliberately, from all appearances - and the big gruff Russians had automatically relaxed a little, faced with a pretty girl in tears. There were perhaps half a dozen other guests who'd managed to stay quite and elude Saidullayev's people. All of them were being shepherded out under police guard.
Angelo had been only too happy to hand over his charge into police custody and someone who could look at that nasty head wound, and then had hung back a little from the police, though not far enough to be suspicious. He turned Samie round to face him, after a moment. "Samie... you're gonna be safe out here now."
"What are you doing?" Samie asked, bewildered. "You're coming out with us, yes?" She flinched at what sounded like explosions, down the hall and in the general direction of the conference hall.
One of the Russian police officers gave him a dubious look, clearly knowing enough English to pick that up. Before he could say anything, however, one of the other said something to him, and the man frowned. "You are... Sancho, yes?" he asked cautiously.
"That's me," he told the man, businesslike, then turned back to Samie. "My friends are in here, somewhere. My team."
"But-" Samie let out a yelp as one of the other police officers, apparently not liking the idea of an extended conversation in the middle of an assault on the building, reached out and all but picked her up off her feet, likely as a prelude to carrying her out.
"Wait," Angelo said hastily. "Samie, I have to. But I'll be okay, yeah? Find Nathan, when it's all over an' you can. He'll know where I am." He looked up at the policeman, not smiling. "Look after her."
The man nodded curtly, and hauled her away to safety. The officer who'd spoken English put a large hand on Angelo's shoulder, offering him what Angelo immediately recognized as an X-Men earpiece. "From... Cyclops, he said."
Angelo almost smiled at that, accepting the device - it was just like Scott to have known what he'd do. "Thanks," he told the man, wasting no time getting the earpiece in place.
--
Protect the civilians. Just like one of the DR scenarios, except here most of the civilians were passed out on the floor instead of running around getting in the way. Of course, that also meant they were sitting ducks if the terrorists got it in their minds to start taking people out. As Marie looked around the room, the gas dissipating into the air, she offered a quick prayer that this encounter with Saidullayev wouldn't have the same affect on her as the last one. Especially since without Logan around, if she went down there wasn't much of a chance of her getting up again. She reminded herself that it was unlikely they had another power inhibitor in their ranks and even if they did, she was better prepared now for that type of situation.
"Power goes back on in ten seconds," came Scott's voice over the coms. "Cannonball's going to cover the kitchen exit, he'll be on-site in five. Cable and Phoenix report at least five mutant hostiles in the room according to their scan, so watch it."
Garrison was holding his baton tightly, ready to snap it open. He hadn't said a word, just transitioned into his position and waited. Unlike Youra, these weren't soldiers. Just fanatics with guns, and they'd already killed someone. Which meant the rules went out the window. He rubbed a thumb along the pebbled grip and waited for the power to come back on.
Cain nodded and gave a thumbs-up, slipping the small gas mask over his mouth. Invulnerable as he might be, he still had to breathe and now wasn't the time to take chances getting slow and sloppy. Focusing slightly, he willed the heavy black armor into existence around him and took up a three-point stance, aiming for the door. "Gimme the word," he whispered over to Rogue.
Taking another deep breath, Marie glanced at her teammates, securing her own gas mask and waiting for Garrison to do the same. "Let's do this," she said with a nod at Cain, moving to stand behind him. Any of the three of them could've broken the door down, but Cain's sheer mass would leave a wide enough hole for all of them to make it through plus potentially regain them the element of surprise with two more people able to pop out from behind the loud crashing that was bound to draw the attention of everyone still awake in the room.
At the nod, Cain sprang forward, for the moment feeling like he was sixteen again and knocking aside an offensive lineman from a rival high school, to wrap his arms around the quarterback and drive him down to the turf.
Of course, the steel-framed doors gave as much resistance as a pack of Girl Scouts in front of a speeding truck, popping right off their hinges to be stomped flat as Cain barrelled into the room, slamming one fist into the ground to stop himself and send a shockwave through the floor, hopefully enough to surprise any terrorists inside.
Saidullayev's people had expected gas; it was a frequent enough tactic by the Russian police, and had been factored into their plans for the operation. Not all of them had gotten their own gas masks on quickly enough. A few black-clad terrorists were on the floor, as still as their hostages, and others, their reactions slowed by a lungful or two of the gas, fell victim to Cain's shockwave.
Others, however, did not. Energy blasts came at the three X-Men from two different directions, and one of the terrorists blurred into motion, rushing at them with a burst of speed that would have made Pietro have to put some effort into catching up. By chance, the woman went for Garrison, rather than the other two.
It was unfortunate that, unlike the X-Men, she had no idea what she was facing. Garrison barely seemed to move, looking for all the world like a normal person as the blur streaked towards him. At the last possible second (helped along by his organic tactical chip) the Mountie moved, twisted to the right like a bullfighter and bringing up his arm impossibly fast. The split second nature duped the speedster, and she hit Kane's arm like an iron bar set across her path. She tumbled end over end several times before slamming to rest against the wall, her momentum enough to crack the brickwork. Kane didn't even bother to look back, pushing further into the room and towards the hostages.
Another spot of movement caught the corner of Rogue's eye and she turned to face it, narrowing her eyes. "Spread out, make sure we get 'em all quick and fast," she said to her teammates before heading towards the corner of the room.
More energy blasts peppered the approaching X-Men. Another woman, this one surrounded by a nimbus of blue light, went airborne and dove at Rogue. One of her comrades whirled around, the gun in one hand firing and the other hand, outstretched, producing a sudden stream of what could only be described as fireworks. They didn't reach the X-Men, but they detonated in mid-air, and everything went white.
Cain just smiled. Months of Danger Room training sessions with Alison had made blindfighting almost instinctive. Establish mental image of your surroundings. Know what is stationary and what is moving. Know WHERE it's going to move.
Two steps to his left put him right in the path of the bullets, ricochets pinging off the walls and floor. The sound of the slide on the gun racking back was as good as a beacon to Cain despite his eyes being tightly closed. Cain reached back with one hand and felt a thin pole of some kind. Tracking the sound of gunfire, he cocked his arm and threw whatever he was holding like a javelin.
When the gunfire stopped, he opened his eyes, blinking back green splotches in his vision to see the gunman lying flat on his back, a stunning bruise already forming on his forehead, from the object Cain had used as an impromptu projectile.
A polished teak coatrack.
"Nate is never gonna let me hear the end of this..." he grumbled, turning to see how Rogue and Dominion were faring.
Marie hadn't had the same training as Cain, but luckily for her the girl dive bombing her had kept coming despite the blinding whiteness. They had grappled for few moments before Marie had been able to grab a hold of her arm, swinging the terrorist into a nearby wall. While the girl was stunned, Marie had managed to feel for her shoulders and pull the girl in front of her. Cain turned just in time to see Marie headbutt the glowing girl.
Another energy projector, this one wearing a secure gas mask, took a shot at Garrison, the blast of plasma barely missing the X-Man. It caught a row of chairs instead, which burst into flame - dangerously close to the prone bodies of half a dozen hostages.
Garrison wrenched up the table, spinning to bowl it at the flaming row. The impact scattered them into a series of smaller fires, but now burning away from the hostages on the floor. A second plasma burst caught him in the small of the back, but he had already been trying to roll with the impact he knew he couldn't avoid. His suit took most of the blast, but the lancing strike took him off his feet, throwing him into the wall with a wet crack.
In three steps, Cain interposed himself between the energy projector and his downed teammate, blocking the follow-up shots with his chest. "I swear to God, Canada," he grumbled impatiently, "these fellas are starting to piss me off. You alive down there?"
"As soon as I find my spine, yeah." Garrison hauled himself to his feet with a groan. The energycaster had already wasted two charges against Cain's armor and was turning back to the hostages in frustration. Cain barely had time to blink as Garrison scaled him, planting a foot on his shoulder and throwing himself into a dive. His quickness was unexpected as he crashed unelegantly into the other mutant, both of them going down in a huddle.
Marie, meanwhile, was busy working her way through a series of armed gunmen. The first had looked surprised when she'd bent the barrel of his gun to a 90 degree angle, making him easy to knock out. The rest had tried to keep their distance after watching her make short work of the first man. Unfortunately, their attempts to discourage her from coming closer by shooting at her had little to no effect and she continued knocking them out one by one until she a trail of unconcious gunmen lay in her wake.
"Now fellas, this isn't the time to play leapfrog," Rogue called over to her companions, covering her anxiety at hearing Garrison hit the wall just moments before.
Cain let Garrison tussle with the energy projector for a moment before walking over to make sure the unconscious hostages hadn't been hit by any ricochets or stray energy blasts. Convincing himself that the civilians were okay, he turned to his two younger teammates. "Yo, Canada? You got like twenty pounds on that guy, how come he's still wriggling? I thought they raised you Mounties tough up north?"
Kane ignored him, finally getting a grip on the back of the man's head and slamming him forehead first into the tile. His legs shuddered and then went limp, lying there like a puppet with its strings cut. Garrison forced himself back to his feet, scanning for other targets but not seeing any.
"Rogue, report," came Cyclops' voice over the coms as she dealt with the last of the gunmen. He was leaning over the table back in the command center, his jaw tight as he'd listened to what little chatter there had been over the coms. This was damned hard, sitting in here while his team did the fighting. But there were too many factors in play for him to be able to keep track of them all if he was right there in the thick of it.
"Hostiles are down, hostages seem mostly unharmed," Rogue replied, surveying the room. "Ah'd mark this one in the success column." Moving amongst the downed gunmen, she secured them while making a pile of their weaponry. "Um...pretty much everyone but the three of us is unconscious though. How should we proceed?"
"Finish securing the room and - wait one." The silence was brief, but seemed longer than it was. When Scott spoke again, his voice was still steady, but infinitely more tense. "Evac. Start picking up hostages and carrying them out of there, as fast as you can. We've got police and militia coming in to help with them and the terrorists, but you need to clear that room and get them outside now."
"Boys, you heard the man. Looks like we've been relegated to the heavy lifting." Grabbing two hostages, one under each arm, Marie flew out of the room, depositing the unconscious women outside before quickly returning. "Do we get to know why were in such a rush?" she asked as she grabbed another two bodies.
"Bomb," was Scott's curt voice. "Cannonball and Sancho are on it, but you have to get those people out of there." There was background noise, agitated voices. "I'll redirect Cable and Phoenix to - shit," he snapped suddenly, a highly uncharacteristic break in communications discipline for the X-Men's field leader. "Scratch that, you're on your own - Saidullayev's making a run for it."
Marie's lips thinned as she ran the next two hostages out, passing Garrison and Cain on their way in to pick up more hostages. "Don't let him get away this time," she muttered to herself when they were out of earshot. As much as she wanted to drop everything and go after the man, she forced herself to focus on the task she and her teammates had been assigned.
--
"Cannonball, this is Cyclops, we've got a problem." Scott's voice was tight but urgent over the coms, and he went on without waiting for Sam to reply. "I've got a Russian communications guy saying that he picked up walkie-talkie chatter between the terrorists. They've got a bomb in the basement, right below the conference room - that's their last resort, and someone just ordered one team to get down there and finish wiring it up."
He yanked a sheet of the blueprints across the table, scanning them hurriedly. "Out of the kitchen and take a left, and the access stairs are at the end of the hall..." He couldn't send Sam down there by himself, but everyone else was... "Sancho!" Scott said sharply, remembering that yes, there was in fact another X-Man, trainee or not, on-site. "If you've got your friend safely out of the line of fire, join Cannonball - access stairs in the corridor north of the kitchen."
"She's safe", Angelo confirmed curtly over his communicator, turning in what he hoped was towards the kitchen and therefore that corridor. "On my way, Cannonball."
"En route," Sam called curtly over the comm, slamming his shoulder into a door and crashing into a back stairwell. He took each half-flight at a leap, bracing himself against the wall to avoid hitting it with his body.
"The Russian bomb squad isn't here," Scott was saying rapidly a minute or so later. "They're coming, but if you don't stop Saidullayev's people before they do anything like set the timer, we've got a problem."
"Then we'd better just make sure we do", came from Angelo, already halfway down the corridor towards the access door.
The basement was poorly lit by the emergency lights, but the red glow was bright enough to allow the two X-Men to proceed, guided by Scott's frequent directions over the coms. Without him standing over the blueprints, guiding them, they never would have found the terrorists. The silence down here was eerie and almost complete, in sharp contrast to the noise they had left behind upstairs.
It was the boiler room that Scott directed them towards. "They should be right inside," he relayed tensely. "Get in there, take them down fast. The bomb squad's two minutes behind you."
Angelo nodded curtly and uselessly, fighting down the nervousness - or fear - he was trying to disguise. "Cannonball, you want to take the lead? I'll be right behind you."
"Absolutely," Sam replied shortly. His blast field ignited with a roar. If the terrorists had guns, he couldn't necessarily trust his reaction time to be fast enough to bring it up before bullets hit him. Rather than open the door, he blew it inward with a power-assisted kick and charged into the basement.
Angelo, as promised, was right on his heels, keeping carefully in the protection of Sam's blast field. No sense risking stray bullets, after all.
And bullets there most definitely were. Three of the five terrorists opened fire immediately - two with guns, one with what looked like honest-to-goodness miniature fireballs. The other two terrorists were bent over the bomb, hastily making final adjustments.
Sam continued his charge into the center of the room, drawing fire from the terrorists. The bullets and fireballs impacted harmlessly on his blast field, and he angled towards one of the gunmen and sent him flying backwards with a haymaker.
Angelo had no intention of hiding behind Sam and letting the older man do all the work. He ducked round him now, keeping low, and headed straight towards the men working on the bomb.
One didn't look up, just kept working on the bomb, his face grim and set. The other looked up with a curse and raised a gun, pointing it directly at Angelo.
Angelo didn't stop, just snapped up a hand and sent out strips of skin from his fingers, tangling around the terrorist's gun hand. "I'll have that", he said curtly, jerking the gun away.
The terrorist swore and lunged at him, obviously trying to keep him from bothering his comrade still working on the bomb. On the other side of the room, the second gunman was down, and the fireball-thrower was looking increasingly perturbed that his powers didn't seem to be penetrating Sam's blast shield. He shouted something defiant in Chechen.
One battle cry deserved another, and Sam cut loose with a loud Rebel Yell as he took another quick step and launched himself into the air, curling up just like his code name and cannonballing into the fireball thrower.
Angelo sent the gun skittering to the other side of the room, well out of anyone's reach, then turned back to grapple with the other terrorist, aiming to force him back towards his friend and the bomb, in the hope of getting past him to disrupt the work.
The man stumbled, his eyes bugging out as strips of skin immobilized him. He tried to yank away, swearing when Angelo didn't let him go - and wound up falling against his friend, knocking the second man back, away from the bomb.
Sam levered himself quickly up from the floor and turned to the bomb. Seeing Angelo had the situation well in hand, so to speak, he grinned and let his blast field die down. "Nice work, Sancho," he told the younger man.
He got a grin in return, Angelo holding the two men in place without much effort, and a cheerful if tired, "Thanks!"
The bomb squad arrived almost immediately, pushing past the two X-Men, some of the militia following quickly taking the terrorists into custody. The head of the bomb squad took one look at the bomb and immediately relaxed, muttering a few very relieved-sounding words in Russian before he repeated them over his radio.
"Cannonball, Sancho," came Scott's voice over the X-Men's coms, "I'm being told the bomb's under control. Head back upstairs, help with the cleanup."
--
#He's on the move.# Nathan didn't identify the 'he'; there was only one fanatical asshole of a telekinetic being chased down here, and Jean could sense that blazing psi-pattern and the chaos it was causing outside just as well as he could. "Storm, this is Cable," he said aloud, over the coms. "Meet us at the service entrance - Saidullayev's making a run for it."
He glanced sideways at Jean as they hurried down the corridor, his expression tight. #If he gets out into the city-#
She couldn't promise he wouldn't - they would do their best to grab him before then, but the man was strong. #We herd him,# she answered, face grim. #Steer him away from civilians.#
Ororo took flight as soon as the word came from Cable; obviously in a situation like this, there was no time to lose. She took the icy, biting winds and used them to her advantage, channeling them in order to guide herself closer to the service entrance. As she neared it, she could see she wasn't alone - dozens of police officers were lined up outside the door, weapons poised as their own radios crackled with new information.
"Cable, I am not alone out here. There are at least two dozen police in formation."
Nathan blanched. "Get them out of his way!" he said urgently over the coms, and his feet left the ground. There wasn't room in here for the firebird, but he could fly without it, and he - and Jean, who was keeping pace with him - had to get out there.
Illyas Saidullayev stopped as he stepped out into the cold January air. His eyes raked over the police officers once, contemptuously -and he started to walk forward again. They opened fire, but the bullets bent around him, directed off on harmless trajectories. As he approached the first line of police, men and women started to wilt, slumping to the ground where they laid there, unmoving.
Jean's telepathy, better trained than her telekinesis, caught the flickers as the police force fell, minds shutting down under the onslaught. It was too contemptuous an attack to be focused, and so Jean was reasonably confident the affected people would survive, but letting him continue the attacks was not an option. Sooner or later he'd hit one of them too hard. Instead, Jean simply reached out and moved the remaining consciousnesses away from him, leaving him a clear path away from the building.
At the same time that Jean was doing that, Ororo was lifting a nearby trashcan with a carefully-controlled wind. She knew there wasn't any chance of taking him out that easily, but she hoped the distraction would give the other telepaths time to get the officers out of harm's way. And it wouldn't hurt if it gave Saidullayev a headache, either. With all the strength she could muster she flung it towards him, lifting off from the ground in case he made any sudden attempts at escaping.
Saidullayev didn't wave a hand, didn't make any kind of gesture. The trash can flew away on an entirely different trajectory, not so much blocked as simply redirected. Just as the bullets had been. Two of the police cars picked themselves up off the ground, picking up speed as they flew around him in a circle - and right at Ororo.
At the same moment, Nathan and Jean burst out of the service entrance. Nathan took one look at the man and flung himself forward, his firebird blazing into light around him. He did not expect the counterattack to come as it did. Saidullayev struck at the exoskeleton's left wing, rather than going right for Nathan, and it was more than enough to spin him around in the air, briefly off-balance - and easy prey for the sledgehammer blow that took the firebird in the 'chest' and sent him into the storefront on the other side of the street.
Saidullayev smiled slightly at Jean - and levitated, flying off to the west at an impressive rate.
Cars? Cars? The outraged word was just about the only thing that Ororo had a chance to think before she was faced with the rapidly-impending cruisers. Another strong gust deflected them into a wall, and from there they didn't so much crash to the ground as sink gracefully down until the mangled wrecks were resting on the oil-soaked pavement.
The little smile, Jean decided, was not intended as a taunt. It had that effect as she shot into the air after the man, but the awareness that he saw her as little more than an annoying bug meant he probably wasn't intentionally taunting her.
Nathan reappeared out of the shattered storefront, visibly in a very foul mood. Without so much as a glance around at the remaining police or his CO, he took off after Jean and Saidullayev. He was very obviously pushing the upper limits of his speed in the firebird, which meant that he wasn't going to catch up to the other two telekinetics until they stopped.
But it also meant that he was far enough back to see Saidullayev reach out as he flew and tear at the buildings he passed, sending glass and other debris flying outwards over the street. Nathan sensed Jean shielding herself and trying to shield the people on the street as they ran screaming for cover, and knew that he wasn't going to be able to help if he stuck to the exoskeleton. There were occasionally drawbacks to not being able to use his telekinesis independently when he was wearing it.
He cut the exoskeleton, and in the same moment, buoyed himself up in the air with telekinesis and added his shields to Jean's, covering the areas she couldn't reach. Without the exoskeleton, however, he was capable of much more multitasking than that, and he lashed out at Saidullayev himself, sending the other man tumbling from the air.
Ororo never liked being left behind, and she wasn't about to sit back and let Jean and Nathan deal with the Chechen madman all on their own. Winds buffeted her as she soared after the telekinetics, and a moment later Nathan felt them begin to swirl about him as she neared. "Might want to steady yourself, Cable," she said over the coms - her control over lifting other objects was improving, but it was nowhere near perfect yet.
"Got it." He couldn't fly anywhere near as well without the exoskeleton, but Ororo was doing all the hard work. She'd get them there.
Saidullayev recovered with startling speed from his unexpected fall - he'd obviously shielded himself on impact. One moment, he was back on his feet. The next, he was back in the air, his eyes locked on Jean. That slight smile returned as he floated back, still facing her, until he was hovering over the intersection, twenty feet or so beyond the spot where he'd fallen.
Despite the lateness of the hour, there was still traffic, and not just of the pedestrian variety. Half a dozen cars levitated, even as their drivers tried desperately to do U-turns to get away from the man floating in mid-air. The facades tore off the buildings on all four corners of the intersection.
There wasn't the slightest look of strain on the Chechen telekinetic's face. Just concentration, and that same slight smile as debris and cars swirled around him - then flew at Jean.
Not as concentrated as Scott's optic blasts, and not as diffuse as the lake, stopping the debris was not the problem. Keeping them from hitting the ground was. There were still civilians down there who either hadn't gotten the message or just weren't fast enough to get out of the way, and the drivers in the cars meant she couldn't just total them. And she didn't have the finesse to do everything at once. A decision had to be made.
Floating in midair, not reacting to the cars barreling towards her, Jean quickly ripped the doors off of the inhabited cars, tearing through the seat belts and carefully lifting the civilians out and toward the ground, with an offhand thought in Nate's direction. #I'd appreciate it if you kept him from killing me...#
#Yeah. Okay,# was all the response she got as Nathan and Ororo arrived. Nathan slipped out of the grasp of the winds and landed on his feet, hard enough to send a shock up his spine. He caught the cars and the vast majority of the debris, the tip of his psimitar blazing as he split his focus countless ways.
Right back at you, asshole, he thought, pushing it all together, and a twisting snake of debris and now-smashed cars lashed out at the terrorist. It hit hastily erected shields, but the impact was still enough to knock Saidullayev to the ground.
When he got back up, he wasn't smiling. The building on the southwest corner of the intersection, closest to the three X-Men, started to tear itself apart.
The drivers out of the way and their cars no longer looking to impact on her skull, Jean dropped to the ground herself, blessing whatever God and emergency response system had finally gotten Saidullayev to pick a non-populated building. Released from having to worry quite so much about casualties Jean wrested a pair of the larger chunks from his grasp as he focused on the building as a whole and launched them at him, hoping to provide something of a distraction.
In a battle of telekinetics, the weatherworker was vastly out of her league; it was all Ororo could do to help guide the jagged chunks of concrete and cement to a safer resting place on the ground. The squeal of tires behind her, however, gave her an idea of something she could do - deter vehicles, pedestrians, and most importantly, media teams, from coming anywhere near the battle.
The winds were already icy-cold, and it didn't take much more than a nudge in the proper direction to stir a few fat, white flakes from the clouds above. A little more manipulation and they began to fall harder, swirling and dancing until the air was thick with them. Visibility began to obscure, and the frigid bite of the air was enough to keep most sane people out of the streets.
That just left the insane, and those that fought him.
They had to get him out of the city, Nathan thought, or at least away from buildings he could turn into weapons. #We've got to drive him towards the river,# he projected to his two teammates. #It's the most open space anywhere around here...# Even as he said it, he acted on it. The psimitar blazed so brightly that it was visible even through the blizzard, and all of the debris Saidullayev had just created was drawn into Nathan's 'snake', which smashed again at the other telekinetic.
Shockingly, Saidullayev obliged, taking to the air again and flying off in precisely the right direction. Nathan grinned tightly. #Jean, can I get a ride?#
#Of course.# She launched the two of them, aiming for more altitude since the blizzard had dropped visibility. She was reasonably sure she'd be able to pick up the thoughts if Saidullayev decided to toss more buildings at them, but steering into a tree she couldn't see on a blind chase after him would be stupid.
Despite the problems they were having in tracking Saidullayev, Ororo continued to whip the winds into a further fury. What was bad for them would be bad for him as well, and there was always the chance that they might gain on him should he slow to navigate the storm. "Cable, any ideas once we reach the river?" she asked, hoping the older man had something in mind to stop the Chechen. Because everything we have thrown at him thus far has proven futile. Both literally and figuratively.
#He can't multitask indefinitely,# Nathan said, ignoring the insistent voice at the back of his mind that pointed out he had managed multitasking for a truly disturbing number of hours back at Mistra, in testing. I wasn't throwing buildings around at the time, was I? #But I think maybe telepathy is-#
He didn't finish. Something came hurtling at them out of the blizzard, and Nathan wrenched himself out of Jean's grip instinctively, his exoskeleton flashing into life around him. Talons reached out in a desperate grab, perfectly timed.
Unfortunately, the something was a bridge. Or what had been a bridge a moment before, rather, and Nathan hadn't quite anticipated the weight.
The wreckage knocked the firebird out of the sky, one last vicious twist by Saidullayev wrapping steel girders around Nathan's exoskeleton an instant before he hit the ice, smashing through and into the icy water beneath.
The shock as Nate ripped himself out of her grip threw Jean off balance and she didn't have time to react before Nate was in the river, but he'd made a suggestion, or at least started to, and Jean was more than willing to follow up on the idea. The telepathic blast she sent at Saidullayev wasn't designed to do much more than stun him with the noise, but that it definitely managed. Wouldn't take him long to recover, Jean thought, but it would give them a chance to get Nate out of there.
Ororo could barely see the terrorist through the blizzard, but he seemed momentarily stunned after Jean's attack. She was worried about Nathan, of course - there wasn't any sign of him in the icy river below - but they had priorities. "Do that again!" she instructed Jean over the coms, already levering up a huge chunk of ice that had been broken in Nathan's fall in order to hurl it at Saidullayev.
Saidullayev, barely visible as a faintly glowing shape through the storm - he was clearly exerting more of his energy now, to be producing visual effects - redirected the chunk of ice off towards the shore. It slammed down onto the road, barely missing three cars that had been caught in the storm and whose drivers had been proceeding, if slowly and cautiously, towards their destination. Jean's second telepathic blast sent him downwards, if not all the way down to the ice, and the glow around him flickered.
Underwater, Nathan struggled futilely against the wreckage trapping his exoskeleton, sinking almost to the bottom before he realized that this wasn't the way. The cold was dulling his reflexes, his thoughts, too fast; on land he'd have been able to free himself easily enough, but not down here. Taking a deep breath of the air still trapped inside the firebird, he collapsed the exoskeleton and gave himself a telekinetic push upwards, towards where he'd spotted the hole in the ice before the light from his exoskeleton had died.
Something smashed into him, knocking him back down towards the bottom of the river. The new leathers cushioned the impact of the blow to his chest and should, but not entirely - it was still hard enough to drive the rest of the air from his lungs.
Panic hit, and although he instinctively lashed out with his telekinesis, tearing through the wreckage, he also instinctively tried to breathe. He had never felt this before, his lungs filling with water instead of air.
Up. He had to get up. A blast of telekinesis propelled him towards the surface and into the air that seemed just as cold. He hit the ice hard, skidding across it for what seemed like forever before he finally came to a stop.
The panic in Nate's mind inspired the third telepathic blast, sharper than the first two as Jean struggled to beat through Saidullayev's defenses - they needed to end this, now.
All of a sudden the snow flurries around them cleared; they still fell thickly beyond the river, but they needed to be able to see if they were going to continue hammering the terrorist with blows. "More!"
Coughing and retching in an involuntary but no less enthusiastic attempt to get the water out of his lungs, Nathan realized two things. Firstly, he could sense Saidullayev, and the son of a bitch was reeling. The Chechen had a strong mind, but he wasn't a telepath, and Jean was hammering the shit out of him.
Secondly, he had somehow managed to hold onto his psimitar. Nathan gritted his teeth and poured power through it, amplified exponentially. He sent the telekinetic blast right at Saidullayev. It shattered his physical shields in a split-second, and Nathan felt bone fracture, giving way under the blast.
Saidullayev hit the ice, landing in a crumpled heap, but not hard enough to break it. And somehow, unbelievably, he was hauling himself back to his feet a moment later, power gathering around him yet again.
"Son of a BITCH!" Nathan snarled aloud, incredulous anger getting the better of him. #STAY DOWN!# He was about to follow up his first blast with another, felt Jean readying another telepathic blast.
But someone else beat them to it.
It wasn't common to see lightning flash during a snow storm; it was even rarer that the target was the middle of a frozen lake. It happened that day, however, as Ororo called down a bolt that struck its target true, throwing Saidullayev back onto the ice and filling the sky with a peal of thunder just a moment later. By the twitching of his limbs they could see that he was still alive, but he made no move to stand this time.
His shields, both mental and physical, were a shambles. Jean could feel his mind twitching about as the energy coursed through him and decided it would be better for all involved if he just didn't wake up until the authorities had him firmly in hand. And, now that he couldn't focus enough to blink, it was not a problem to reach into his mind and shut it down for the moment.
That done, Jean levitated across the ice to where Nate was still kneeling on the ice. "You ok?" He'd been yelling earlier, so he was clearly breathing, but hypothermia would likely be a problem.
Nathan, in the middle of a coughing spasm - his lungs weren't quite clear - managed a ragged nod. When he looked up, wheezing, it was Ororo he was glaring at.
"You couldn't have done that before he threw a bridge at me?"
Touching down on the ice lightly, Ororo frowned. "You could not have ducked? And it is not as if you were the only one... he threw a car at me!"
"It was going to land over on the shore! Over there! With the buildings, and the people-" Nathan went off into another coughing spasm as the winds eased around them, the snow stopping.
"Right, no more talking for you," Jean said, listening to the ragged cough. "Let's collect the man with the fetish for throwing around perfectly good masonry and find a proper authority to hand him over to. I'm cold and Nate's going to have frostbite if we don't get him warmed up." Suiting action to words, she picked up Saidullayev telekinetically, 'accidentally' bouncing the man's head on the ice and turning back towards the shore.
#Angelo.# It was Nathan's voice again, sharper and more tense than it had been the last time. #We're breaching the building. Get up, take Samie, and go down the back fire stairs - down to the end of the hall and to your right. Jean and I are directing some of the other people hiding out in rooms to do the same - the police are expecting you. Just keep your hands in sight, and move, fast.#
What Angelo sent back wasn't verbal, just a quick wordless feeling of assent, as he stood up quickly. "Samie? It's time to go. They're about to come in, we have to get out."
Samie rose, moving a little stiffly. They'd both been sitting there for a few too many hours. "I'll follow you," she said, her voice hushed and strained.
He nodded. "We're goin' down the back fire stairs. The cops out there know we're comin', but keep your hands out."
They headed out into the hall, as quietly as they could. Samie's expression tensed at the sight of the two bodies on the floor several doors down, but she looked away, following Angelo as he led her in the other direction.
Angelo hadn't spared the bodies more than a glance, but his own face was strained as they kept walking. "It's goin' to be okay," he assured her quietly.
They reached the stairs without incident and started down. On the floor below, the door flew open - thankfully, to reveal a terrified-looking older woman who shrieked softly at them and then ran down the stairs before either Angelo or Samie could say anything to reassure her.
At least she was going the right way, and no one was likely to take her for a terrorist when she was so obviously scared. "...right then. We keep goin'."
They made it three more floors down before they saw anyone else. The door opened, and this time, it was clearly not a hostage. A young man clad in black, maybe not much older than Angelo, stopped and stared at him for a startled instant, his gun dipping downwards.
Angelo stepped instantly in front of Samie, then took advantage of the young man's hesitation to lunge forward at him, trying to grab the gun before he brought it back up.
The young terrorist swore, wrestling with Angelo for the gun. He spat more words in what had to be Chechen, sounding half-panicked, half-threatening.
Angelo had the upper hand, and managed to slam the terrorist back into the wall, pinning him for a few seconds. It was long enough to get the gun out of his hand, at least.
The young terrorist did clearly have some training in hand-to-hand, though, and the wrestling match might have turned into something considerably more serious. But that unfortunate eventuality was abruptly and quite comprehensively forestalled by the fire extinguisher that smashed into the side of the young terrorist's head. He sagged, and Angelo turned to see Samie blinking at him, looking rather taken aback.
He stared at her for a long few moments, then grinned a little sickly. "...well, that told him.... thanks." The last was genuinely sincere, if still a little dazed, and he turned to pick up the young terrorist and settle him on his shoulder. It looked like he'd need medical attention, and he could hand him over once they got out.
"He'll live." Samie's voice was soft, but sounded a little wild. "I think. Um... why not just leave him there?"
"Because he might not, if we leave him an' it takes them too long to get up here," Angelo said grimly. "An' because in another life, I could've ended up not so far different from him."
--
They had run into the police near the first floor, and Angelo had made use of his limited Russian to try and explain that yes, the person he was carrying was indeed one of the terrorists. Samie had turned on the waterworks - quite deliberately, from all appearances - and the big gruff Russians had automatically relaxed a little, faced with a pretty girl in tears. There were perhaps half a dozen other guests who'd managed to stay quite and elude Saidullayev's people. All of them were being shepherded out under police guard.
Angelo had been only too happy to hand over his charge into police custody and someone who could look at that nasty head wound, and then had hung back a little from the police, though not far enough to be suspicious. He turned Samie round to face him, after a moment. "Samie... you're gonna be safe out here now."
"What are you doing?" Samie asked, bewildered. "You're coming out with us, yes?" She flinched at what sounded like explosions, down the hall and in the general direction of the conference hall.
One of the Russian police officers gave him a dubious look, clearly knowing enough English to pick that up. Before he could say anything, however, one of the other said something to him, and the man frowned. "You are... Sancho, yes?" he asked cautiously.
"That's me," he told the man, businesslike, then turned back to Samie. "My friends are in here, somewhere. My team."
"But-" Samie let out a yelp as one of the other police officers, apparently not liking the idea of an extended conversation in the middle of an assault on the building, reached out and all but picked her up off her feet, likely as a prelude to carrying her out.
"Wait," Angelo said hastily. "Samie, I have to. But I'll be okay, yeah? Find Nathan, when it's all over an' you can. He'll know where I am." He looked up at the policeman, not smiling. "Look after her."
The man nodded curtly, and hauled her away to safety. The officer who'd spoken English put a large hand on Angelo's shoulder, offering him what Angelo immediately recognized as an X-Men earpiece. "From... Cyclops, he said."
Angelo almost smiled at that, accepting the device - it was just like Scott to have known what he'd do. "Thanks," he told the man, wasting no time getting the earpiece in place.
--
Protect the civilians. Just like one of the DR scenarios, except here most of the civilians were passed out on the floor instead of running around getting in the way. Of course, that also meant they were sitting ducks if the terrorists got it in their minds to start taking people out. As Marie looked around the room, the gas dissipating into the air, she offered a quick prayer that this encounter with Saidullayev wouldn't have the same affect on her as the last one. Especially since without Logan around, if she went down there wasn't much of a chance of her getting up again. She reminded herself that it was unlikely they had another power inhibitor in their ranks and even if they did, she was better prepared now for that type of situation.
"Power goes back on in ten seconds," came Scott's voice over the coms. "Cannonball's going to cover the kitchen exit, he'll be on-site in five. Cable and Phoenix report at least five mutant hostiles in the room according to their scan, so watch it."
Garrison was holding his baton tightly, ready to snap it open. He hadn't said a word, just transitioned into his position and waited. Unlike Youra, these weren't soldiers. Just fanatics with guns, and they'd already killed someone. Which meant the rules went out the window. He rubbed a thumb along the pebbled grip and waited for the power to come back on.
Cain nodded and gave a thumbs-up, slipping the small gas mask over his mouth. Invulnerable as he might be, he still had to breathe and now wasn't the time to take chances getting slow and sloppy. Focusing slightly, he willed the heavy black armor into existence around him and took up a three-point stance, aiming for the door. "Gimme the word," he whispered over to Rogue.
Taking another deep breath, Marie glanced at her teammates, securing her own gas mask and waiting for Garrison to do the same. "Let's do this," she said with a nod at Cain, moving to stand behind him. Any of the three of them could've broken the door down, but Cain's sheer mass would leave a wide enough hole for all of them to make it through plus potentially regain them the element of surprise with two more people able to pop out from behind the loud crashing that was bound to draw the attention of everyone still awake in the room.
At the nod, Cain sprang forward, for the moment feeling like he was sixteen again and knocking aside an offensive lineman from a rival high school, to wrap his arms around the quarterback and drive him down to the turf.
Of course, the steel-framed doors gave as much resistance as a pack of Girl Scouts in front of a speeding truck, popping right off their hinges to be stomped flat as Cain barrelled into the room, slamming one fist into the ground to stop himself and send a shockwave through the floor, hopefully enough to surprise any terrorists inside.
Saidullayev's people had expected gas; it was a frequent enough tactic by the Russian police, and had been factored into their plans for the operation. Not all of them had gotten their own gas masks on quickly enough. A few black-clad terrorists were on the floor, as still as their hostages, and others, their reactions slowed by a lungful or two of the gas, fell victim to Cain's shockwave.
Others, however, did not. Energy blasts came at the three X-Men from two different directions, and one of the terrorists blurred into motion, rushing at them with a burst of speed that would have made Pietro have to put some effort into catching up. By chance, the woman went for Garrison, rather than the other two.
It was unfortunate that, unlike the X-Men, she had no idea what she was facing. Garrison barely seemed to move, looking for all the world like a normal person as the blur streaked towards him. At the last possible second (helped along by his organic tactical chip) the Mountie moved, twisted to the right like a bullfighter and bringing up his arm impossibly fast. The split second nature duped the speedster, and she hit Kane's arm like an iron bar set across her path. She tumbled end over end several times before slamming to rest against the wall, her momentum enough to crack the brickwork. Kane didn't even bother to look back, pushing further into the room and towards the hostages.
Another spot of movement caught the corner of Rogue's eye and she turned to face it, narrowing her eyes. "Spread out, make sure we get 'em all quick and fast," she said to her teammates before heading towards the corner of the room.
More energy blasts peppered the approaching X-Men. Another woman, this one surrounded by a nimbus of blue light, went airborne and dove at Rogue. One of her comrades whirled around, the gun in one hand firing and the other hand, outstretched, producing a sudden stream of what could only be described as fireworks. They didn't reach the X-Men, but they detonated in mid-air, and everything went white.
Cain just smiled. Months of Danger Room training sessions with Alison had made blindfighting almost instinctive. Establish mental image of your surroundings. Know what is stationary and what is moving. Know WHERE it's going to move.
Two steps to his left put him right in the path of the bullets, ricochets pinging off the walls and floor. The sound of the slide on the gun racking back was as good as a beacon to Cain despite his eyes being tightly closed. Cain reached back with one hand and felt a thin pole of some kind. Tracking the sound of gunfire, he cocked his arm and threw whatever he was holding like a javelin.
When the gunfire stopped, he opened his eyes, blinking back green splotches in his vision to see the gunman lying flat on his back, a stunning bruise already forming on his forehead, from the object Cain had used as an impromptu projectile.
A polished teak coatrack.
"Nate is never gonna let me hear the end of this..." he grumbled, turning to see how Rogue and Dominion were faring.
Marie hadn't had the same training as Cain, but luckily for her the girl dive bombing her had kept coming despite the blinding whiteness. They had grappled for few moments before Marie had been able to grab a hold of her arm, swinging the terrorist into a nearby wall. While the girl was stunned, Marie had managed to feel for her shoulders and pull the girl in front of her. Cain turned just in time to see Marie headbutt the glowing girl.
Another energy projector, this one wearing a secure gas mask, took a shot at Garrison, the blast of plasma barely missing the X-Man. It caught a row of chairs instead, which burst into flame - dangerously close to the prone bodies of half a dozen hostages.
Garrison wrenched up the table, spinning to bowl it at the flaming row. The impact scattered them into a series of smaller fires, but now burning away from the hostages on the floor. A second plasma burst caught him in the small of the back, but he had already been trying to roll with the impact he knew he couldn't avoid. His suit took most of the blast, but the lancing strike took him off his feet, throwing him into the wall with a wet crack.
In three steps, Cain interposed himself between the energy projector and his downed teammate, blocking the follow-up shots with his chest. "I swear to God, Canada," he grumbled impatiently, "these fellas are starting to piss me off. You alive down there?"
"As soon as I find my spine, yeah." Garrison hauled himself to his feet with a groan. The energycaster had already wasted two charges against Cain's armor and was turning back to the hostages in frustration. Cain barely had time to blink as Garrison scaled him, planting a foot on his shoulder and throwing himself into a dive. His quickness was unexpected as he crashed unelegantly into the other mutant, both of them going down in a huddle.
Marie, meanwhile, was busy working her way through a series of armed gunmen. The first had looked surprised when she'd bent the barrel of his gun to a 90 degree angle, making him easy to knock out. The rest had tried to keep their distance after watching her make short work of the first man. Unfortunately, their attempts to discourage her from coming closer by shooting at her had little to no effect and she continued knocking them out one by one until she a trail of unconcious gunmen lay in her wake.
"Now fellas, this isn't the time to play leapfrog," Rogue called over to her companions, covering her anxiety at hearing Garrison hit the wall just moments before.
Cain let Garrison tussle with the energy projector for a moment before walking over to make sure the unconscious hostages hadn't been hit by any ricochets or stray energy blasts. Convincing himself that the civilians were okay, he turned to his two younger teammates. "Yo, Canada? You got like twenty pounds on that guy, how come he's still wriggling? I thought they raised you Mounties tough up north?"
Kane ignored him, finally getting a grip on the back of the man's head and slamming him forehead first into the tile. His legs shuddered and then went limp, lying there like a puppet with its strings cut. Garrison forced himself back to his feet, scanning for other targets but not seeing any.
"Rogue, report," came Cyclops' voice over the coms as she dealt with the last of the gunmen. He was leaning over the table back in the command center, his jaw tight as he'd listened to what little chatter there had been over the coms. This was damned hard, sitting in here while his team did the fighting. But there were too many factors in play for him to be able to keep track of them all if he was right there in the thick of it.
"Hostiles are down, hostages seem mostly unharmed," Rogue replied, surveying the room. "Ah'd mark this one in the success column." Moving amongst the downed gunmen, she secured them while making a pile of their weaponry. "Um...pretty much everyone but the three of us is unconscious though. How should we proceed?"
"Finish securing the room and - wait one." The silence was brief, but seemed longer than it was. When Scott spoke again, his voice was still steady, but infinitely more tense. "Evac. Start picking up hostages and carrying them out of there, as fast as you can. We've got police and militia coming in to help with them and the terrorists, but you need to clear that room and get them outside now."
"Boys, you heard the man. Looks like we've been relegated to the heavy lifting." Grabbing two hostages, one under each arm, Marie flew out of the room, depositing the unconscious women outside before quickly returning. "Do we get to know why were in such a rush?" she asked as she grabbed another two bodies.
"Bomb," was Scott's curt voice. "Cannonball and Sancho are on it, but you have to get those people out of there." There was background noise, agitated voices. "I'll redirect Cable and Phoenix to - shit," he snapped suddenly, a highly uncharacteristic break in communications discipline for the X-Men's field leader. "Scratch that, you're on your own - Saidullayev's making a run for it."
Marie's lips thinned as she ran the next two hostages out, passing Garrison and Cain on their way in to pick up more hostages. "Don't let him get away this time," she muttered to herself when they were out of earshot. As much as she wanted to drop everything and go after the man, she forced herself to focus on the task she and her teammates had been assigned.
--
"Cannonball, this is Cyclops, we've got a problem." Scott's voice was tight but urgent over the coms, and he went on without waiting for Sam to reply. "I've got a Russian communications guy saying that he picked up walkie-talkie chatter between the terrorists. They've got a bomb in the basement, right below the conference room - that's their last resort, and someone just ordered one team to get down there and finish wiring it up."
He yanked a sheet of the blueprints across the table, scanning them hurriedly. "Out of the kitchen and take a left, and the access stairs are at the end of the hall..." He couldn't send Sam down there by himself, but everyone else was... "Sancho!" Scott said sharply, remembering that yes, there was in fact another X-Man, trainee or not, on-site. "If you've got your friend safely out of the line of fire, join Cannonball - access stairs in the corridor north of the kitchen."
"She's safe", Angelo confirmed curtly over his communicator, turning in what he hoped was towards the kitchen and therefore that corridor. "On my way, Cannonball."
"En route," Sam called curtly over the comm, slamming his shoulder into a door and crashing into a back stairwell. He took each half-flight at a leap, bracing himself against the wall to avoid hitting it with his body.
"The Russian bomb squad isn't here," Scott was saying rapidly a minute or so later. "They're coming, but if you don't stop Saidullayev's people before they do anything like set the timer, we've got a problem."
"Then we'd better just make sure we do", came from Angelo, already halfway down the corridor towards the access door.
The basement was poorly lit by the emergency lights, but the red glow was bright enough to allow the two X-Men to proceed, guided by Scott's frequent directions over the coms. Without him standing over the blueprints, guiding them, they never would have found the terrorists. The silence down here was eerie and almost complete, in sharp contrast to the noise they had left behind upstairs.
It was the boiler room that Scott directed them towards. "They should be right inside," he relayed tensely. "Get in there, take them down fast. The bomb squad's two minutes behind you."
Angelo nodded curtly and uselessly, fighting down the nervousness - or fear - he was trying to disguise. "Cannonball, you want to take the lead? I'll be right behind you."
"Absolutely," Sam replied shortly. His blast field ignited with a roar. If the terrorists had guns, he couldn't necessarily trust his reaction time to be fast enough to bring it up before bullets hit him. Rather than open the door, he blew it inward with a power-assisted kick and charged into the basement.
Angelo, as promised, was right on his heels, keeping carefully in the protection of Sam's blast field. No sense risking stray bullets, after all.
And bullets there most definitely were. Three of the five terrorists opened fire immediately - two with guns, one with what looked like honest-to-goodness miniature fireballs. The other two terrorists were bent over the bomb, hastily making final adjustments.
Sam continued his charge into the center of the room, drawing fire from the terrorists. The bullets and fireballs impacted harmlessly on his blast field, and he angled towards one of the gunmen and sent him flying backwards with a haymaker.
Angelo had no intention of hiding behind Sam and letting the older man do all the work. He ducked round him now, keeping low, and headed straight towards the men working on the bomb.
One didn't look up, just kept working on the bomb, his face grim and set. The other looked up with a curse and raised a gun, pointing it directly at Angelo.
Angelo didn't stop, just snapped up a hand and sent out strips of skin from his fingers, tangling around the terrorist's gun hand. "I'll have that", he said curtly, jerking the gun away.
The terrorist swore and lunged at him, obviously trying to keep him from bothering his comrade still working on the bomb. On the other side of the room, the second gunman was down, and the fireball-thrower was looking increasingly perturbed that his powers didn't seem to be penetrating Sam's blast shield. He shouted something defiant in Chechen.
One battle cry deserved another, and Sam cut loose with a loud Rebel Yell as he took another quick step and launched himself into the air, curling up just like his code name and cannonballing into the fireball thrower.
Angelo sent the gun skittering to the other side of the room, well out of anyone's reach, then turned back to grapple with the other terrorist, aiming to force him back towards his friend and the bomb, in the hope of getting past him to disrupt the work.
The man stumbled, his eyes bugging out as strips of skin immobilized him. He tried to yank away, swearing when Angelo didn't let him go - and wound up falling against his friend, knocking the second man back, away from the bomb.
Sam levered himself quickly up from the floor and turned to the bomb. Seeing Angelo had the situation well in hand, so to speak, he grinned and let his blast field die down. "Nice work, Sancho," he told the younger man.
He got a grin in return, Angelo holding the two men in place without much effort, and a cheerful if tired, "Thanks!"
The bomb squad arrived almost immediately, pushing past the two X-Men, some of the militia following quickly taking the terrorists into custody. The head of the bomb squad took one look at the bomb and immediately relaxed, muttering a few very relieved-sounding words in Russian before he repeated them over his radio.
"Cannonball, Sancho," came Scott's voice over the X-Men's coms, "I'm being told the bomb's under control. Head back upstairs, help with the cleanup."
--
#He's on the move.# Nathan didn't identify the 'he'; there was only one fanatical asshole of a telekinetic being chased down here, and Jean could sense that blazing psi-pattern and the chaos it was causing outside just as well as he could. "Storm, this is Cable," he said aloud, over the coms. "Meet us at the service entrance - Saidullayev's making a run for it."
He glanced sideways at Jean as they hurried down the corridor, his expression tight. #If he gets out into the city-#
She couldn't promise he wouldn't - they would do their best to grab him before then, but the man was strong. #We herd him,# she answered, face grim. #Steer him away from civilians.#
Ororo took flight as soon as the word came from Cable; obviously in a situation like this, there was no time to lose. She took the icy, biting winds and used them to her advantage, channeling them in order to guide herself closer to the service entrance. As she neared it, she could see she wasn't alone - dozens of police officers were lined up outside the door, weapons poised as their own radios crackled with new information.
"Cable, I am not alone out here. There are at least two dozen police in formation."
Nathan blanched. "Get them out of his way!" he said urgently over the coms, and his feet left the ground. There wasn't room in here for the firebird, but he could fly without it, and he - and Jean, who was keeping pace with him - had to get out there.
Illyas Saidullayev stopped as he stepped out into the cold January air. His eyes raked over the police officers once, contemptuously -and he started to walk forward again. They opened fire, but the bullets bent around him, directed off on harmless trajectories. As he approached the first line of police, men and women started to wilt, slumping to the ground where they laid there, unmoving.
Jean's telepathy, better trained than her telekinesis, caught the flickers as the police force fell, minds shutting down under the onslaught. It was too contemptuous an attack to be focused, and so Jean was reasonably confident the affected people would survive, but letting him continue the attacks was not an option. Sooner or later he'd hit one of them too hard. Instead, Jean simply reached out and moved the remaining consciousnesses away from him, leaving him a clear path away from the building.
At the same time that Jean was doing that, Ororo was lifting a nearby trashcan with a carefully-controlled wind. She knew there wasn't any chance of taking him out that easily, but she hoped the distraction would give the other telepaths time to get the officers out of harm's way. And it wouldn't hurt if it gave Saidullayev a headache, either. With all the strength she could muster she flung it towards him, lifting off from the ground in case he made any sudden attempts at escaping.
Saidullayev didn't wave a hand, didn't make any kind of gesture. The trash can flew away on an entirely different trajectory, not so much blocked as simply redirected. Just as the bullets had been. Two of the police cars picked themselves up off the ground, picking up speed as they flew around him in a circle - and right at Ororo.
At the same moment, Nathan and Jean burst out of the service entrance. Nathan took one look at the man and flung himself forward, his firebird blazing into light around him. He did not expect the counterattack to come as it did. Saidullayev struck at the exoskeleton's left wing, rather than going right for Nathan, and it was more than enough to spin him around in the air, briefly off-balance - and easy prey for the sledgehammer blow that took the firebird in the 'chest' and sent him into the storefront on the other side of the street.
Saidullayev smiled slightly at Jean - and levitated, flying off to the west at an impressive rate.
Cars? Cars? The outraged word was just about the only thing that Ororo had a chance to think before she was faced with the rapidly-impending cruisers. Another strong gust deflected them into a wall, and from there they didn't so much crash to the ground as sink gracefully down until the mangled wrecks were resting on the oil-soaked pavement.
The little smile, Jean decided, was not intended as a taunt. It had that effect as she shot into the air after the man, but the awareness that he saw her as little more than an annoying bug meant he probably wasn't intentionally taunting her.
Nathan reappeared out of the shattered storefront, visibly in a very foul mood. Without so much as a glance around at the remaining police or his CO, he took off after Jean and Saidullayev. He was very obviously pushing the upper limits of his speed in the firebird, which meant that he wasn't going to catch up to the other two telekinetics until they stopped.
But it also meant that he was far enough back to see Saidullayev reach out as he flew and tear at the buildings he passed, sending glass and other debris flying outwards over the street. Nathan sensed Jean shielding herself and trying to shield the people on the street as they ran screaming for cover, and knew that he wasn't going to be able to help if he stuck to the exoskeleton. There were occasionally drawbacks to not being able to use his telekinesis independently when he was wearing it.
He cut the exoskeleton, and in the same moment, buoyed himself up in the air with telekinesis and added his shields to Jean's, covering the areas she couldn't reach. Without the exoskeleton, however, he was capable of much more multitasking than that, and he lashed out at Saidullayev himself, sending the other man tumbling from the air.
Ororo never liked being left behind, and she wasn't about to sit back and let Jean and Nathan deal with the Chechen madman all on their own. Winds buffeted her as she soared after the telekinetics, and a moment later Nathan felt them begin to swirl about him as she neared. "Might want to steady yourself, Cable," she said over the coms - her control over lifting other objects was improving, but it was nowhere near perfect yet.
"Got it." He couldn't fly anywhere near as well without the exoskeleton, but Ororo was doing all the hard work. She'd get them there.
Saidullayev recovered with startling speed from his unexpected fall - he'd obviously shielded himself on impact. One moment, he was back on his feet. The next, he was back in the air, his eyes locked on Jean. That slight smile returned as he floated back, still facing her, until he was hovering over the intersection, twenty feet or so beyond the spot where he'd fallen.
Despite the lateness of the hour, there was still traffic, and not just of the pedestrian variety. Half a dozen cars levitated, even as their drivers tried desperately to do U-turns to get away from the man floating in mid-air. The facades tore off the buildings on all four corners of the intersection.
There wasn't the slightest look of strain on the Chechen telekinetic's face. Just concentration, and that same slight smile as debris and cars swirled around him - then flew at Jean.
Not as concentrated as Scott's optic blasts, and not as diffuse as the lake, stopping the debris was not the problem. Keeping them from hitting the ground was. There were still civilians down there who either hadn't gotten the message or just weren't fast enough to get out of the way, and the drivers in the cars meant she couldn't just total them. And she didn't have the finesse to do everything at once. A decision had to be made.
Floating in midair, not reacting to the cars barreling towards her, Jean quickly ripped the doors off of the inhabited cars, tearing through the seat belts and carefully lifting the civilians out and toward the ground, with an offhand thought in Nate's direction. #I'd appreciate it if you kept him from killing me...#
#Yeah. Okay,# was all the response she got as Nathan and Ororo arrived. Nathan slipped out of the grasp of the winds and landed on his feet, hard enough to send a shock up his spine. He caught the cars and the vast majority of the debris, the tip of his psimitar blazing as he split his focus countless ways.
Right back at you, asshole, he thought, pushing it all together, and a twisting snake of debris and now-smashed cars lashed out at the terrorist. It hit hastily erected shields, but the impact was still enough to knock Saidullayev to the ground.
When he got back up, he wasn't smiling. The building on the southwest corner of the intersection, closest to the three X-Men, started to tear itself apart.
The drivers out of the way and their cars no longer looking to impact on her skull, Jean dropped to the ground herself, blessing whatever God and emergency response system had finally gotten Saidullayev to pick a non-populated building. Released from having to worry quite so much about casualties Jean wrested a pair of the larger chunks from his grasp as he focused on the building as a whole and launched them at him, hoping to provide something of a distraction.
In a battle of telekinetics, the weatherworker was vastly out of her league; it was all Ororo could do to help guide the jagged chunks of concrete and cement to a safer resting place on the ground. The squeal of tires behind her, however, gave her an idea of something she could do - deter vehicles, pedestrians, and most importantly, media teams, from coming anywhere near the battle.
The winds were already icy-cold, and it didn't take much more than a nudge in the proper direction to stir a few fat, white flakes from the clouds above. A little more manipulation and they began to fall harder, swirling and dancing until the air was thick with them. Visibility began to obscure, and the frigid bite of the air was enough to keep most sane people out of the streets.
That just left the insane, and those that fought him.
They had to get him out of the city, Nathan thought, or at least away from buildings he could turn into weapons. #We've got to drive him towards the river,# he projected to his two teammates. #It's the most open space anywhere around here...# Even as he said it, he acted on it. The psimitar blazed so brightly that it was visible even through the blizzard, and all of the debris Saidullayev had just created was drawn into Nathan's 'snake', which smashed again at the other telekinetic.
Shockingly, Saidullayev obliged, taking to the air again and flying off in precisely the right direction. Nathan grinned tightly. #Jean, can I get a ride?#
#Of course.# She launched the two of them, aiming for more altitude since the blizzard had dropped visibility. She was reasonably sure she'd be able to pick up the thoughts if Saidullayev decided to toss more buildings at them, but steering into a tree she couldn't see on a blind chase after him would be stupid.
Despite the problems they were having in tracking Saidullayev, Ororo continued to whip the winds into a further fury. What was bad for them would be bad for him as well, and there was always the chance that they might gain on him should he slow to navigate the storm. "Cable, any ideas once we reach the river?" she asked, hoping the older man had something in mind to stop the Chechen. Because everything we have thrown at him thus far has proven futile. Both literally and figuratively.
#He can't multitask indefinitely,# Nathan said, ignoring the insistent voice at the back of his mind that pointed out he had managed multitasking for a truly disturbing number of hours back at Mistra, in testing. I wasn't throwing buildings around at the time, was I? #But I think maybe telepathy is-#
He didn't finish. Something came hurtling at them out of the blizzard, and Nathan wrenched himself out of Jean's grip instinctively, his exoskeleton flashing into life around him. Talons reached out in a desperate grab, perfectly timed.
Unfortunately, the something was a bridge. Or what had been a bridge a moment before, rather, and Nathan hadn't quite anticipated the weight.
The wreckage knocked the firebird out of the sky, one last vicious twist by Saidullayev wrapping steel girders around Nathan's exoskeleton an instant before he hit the ice, smashing through and into the icy water beneath.
The shock as Nate ripped himself out of her grip threw Jean off balance and she didn't have time to react before Nate was in the river, but he'd made a suggestion, or at least started to, and Jean was more than willing to follow up on the idea. The telepathic blast she sent at Saidullayev wasn't designed to do much more than stun him with the noise, but that it definitely managed. Wouldn't take him long to recover, Jean thought, but it would give them a chance to get Nate out of there.
Ororo could barely see the terrorist through the blizzard, but he seemed momentarily stunned after Jean's attack. She was worried about Nathan, of course - there wasn't any sign of him in the icy river below - but they had priorities. "Do that again!" she instructed Jean over the coms, already levering up a huge chunk of ice that had been broken in Nathan's fall in order to hurl it at Saidullayev.
Saidullayev, barely visible as a faintly glowing shape through the storm - he was clearly exerting more of his energy now, to be producing visual effects - redirected the chunk of ice off towards the shore. It slammed down onto the road, barely missing three cars that had been caught in the storm and whose drivers had been proceeding, if slowly and cautiously, towards their destination. Jean's second telepathic blast sent him downwards, if not all the way down to the ice, and the glow around him flickered.
Underwater, Nathan struggled futilely against the wreckage trapping his exoskeleton, sinking almost to the bottom before he realized that this wasn't the way. The cold was dulling his reflexes, his thoughts, too fast; on land he'd have been able to free himself easily enough, but not down here. Taking a deep breath of the air still trapped inside the firebird, he collapsed the exoskeleton and gave himself a telekinetic push upwards, towards where he'd spotted the hole in the ice before the light from his exoskeleton had died.
Something smashed into him, knocking him back down towards the bottom of the river. The new leathers cushioned the impact of the blow to his chest and should, but not entirely - it was still hard enough to drive the rest of the air from his lungs.
Panic hit, and although he instinctively lashed out with his telekinesis, tearing through the wreckage, he also instinctively tried to breathe. He had never felt this before, his lungs filling with water instead of air.
Up. He had to get up. A blast of telekinesis propelled him towards the surface and into the air that seemed just as cold. He hit the ice hard, skidding across it for what seemed like forever before he finally came to a stop.
The panic in Nate's mind inspired the third telepathic blast, sharper than the first two as Jean struggled to beat through Saidullayev's defenses - they needed to end this, now.
All of a sudden the snow flurries around them cleared; they still fell thickly beyond the river, but they needed to be able to see if they were going to continue hammering the terrorist with blows. "More!"
Coughing and retching in an involuntary but no less enthusiastic attempt to get the water out of his lungs, Nathan realized two things. Firstly, he could sense Saidullayev, and the son of a bitch was reeling. The Chechen had a strong mind, but he wasn't a telepath, and Jean was hammering the shit out of him.
Secondly, he had somehow managed to hold onto his psimitar. Nathan gritted his teeth and poured power through it, amplified exponentially. He sent the telekinetic blast right at Saidullayev. It shattered his physical shields in a split-second, and Nathan felt bone fracture, giving way under the blast.
Saidullayev hit the ice, landing in a crumpled heap, but not hard enough to break it. And somehow, unbelievably, he was hauling himself back to his feet a moment later, power gathering around him yet again.
"Son of a BITCH!" Nathan snarled aloud, incredulous anger getting the better of him. #STAY DOWN!# He was about to follow up his first blast with another, felt Jean readying another telepathic blast.
But someone else beat them to it.
It wasn't common to see lightning flash during a snow storm; it was even rarer that the target was the middle of a frozen lake. It happened that day, however, as Ororo called down a bolt that struck its target true, throwing Saidullayev back onto the ice and filling the sky with a peal of thunder just a moment later. By the twitching of his limbs they could see that he was still alive, but he made no move to stand this time.
His shields, both mental and physical, were a shambles. Jean could feel his mind twitching about as the energy coursed through him and decided it would be better for all involved if he just didn't wake up until the authorities had him firmly in hand. And, now that he couldn't focus enough to blink, it was not a problem to reach into his mind and shut it down for the moment.
That done, Jean levitated across the ice to where Nate was still kneeling on the ice. "You ok?" He'd been yelling earlier, so he was clearly breathing, but hypothermia would likely be a problem.
Nathan, in the middle of a coughing spasm - his lungs weren't quite clear - managed a ragged nod. When he looked up, wheezing, it was Ororo he was glaring at.
"You couldn't have done that before he threw a bridge at me?"
Touching down on the ice lightly, Ororo frowned. "You could not have ducked? And it is not as if you were the only one... he threw a car at me!"
"It was going to land over on the shore! Over there! With the buildings, and the people-" Nathan went off into another coughing spasm as the winds eased around them, the snow stopping.
"Right, no more talking for you," Jean said, listening to the ragged cough. "Let's collect the man with the fetish for throwing around perfectly good masonry and find a proper authority to hand him over to. I'm cold and Nate's going to have frostbite if we don't get him warmed up." Suiting action to words, she picked up Saidullayev telekinetically, 'accidentally' bouncing the man's head on the ice and turning back towards the shore.
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