Minitooth: Reciprocity

[x-cannonball.livejournal.com]

Nathan, Kurt, Cain, and Sam engage Sabretooth in an abandoned construction area, then deliver him to Garrison, Fred Duncan, and a lot of FBI agents, who take him into custody. Warning for some language.



Sabretooth lumbered through the thin crowd, tilting his head from side
to side as he walked. The light snowfall against his face was slightly
numbing, a welcome departure from the constant knifelike stabs of
agony as his right cheekbone kept slowly knitting itself together. The
black patch over his right eye stood out even from a distance,
protecting the gelatinous mass that was his slowly-regenerating
eyeball. If the kid wasn't dead already, Victor Creed swore, he would
be the next time they tussled. Son or not.

Freak injury, but it'd been probably the worst possible. No peripheral
vision, depth perception wrecked, and his sense of smell shot all to
hell with a caved-in sinus cavity, Sabretooth's greatest advantage had
been stripped from him. Still, he thought, he didn't need anything
special to kill one old man. Even though this unadvertised PR
appearance hadn't been broadcast to the media, he'd gotten wind of it
when the local Secret Service office had cased the place beforehand.
Construction site for some new hospital. Far enough out of the main
urban area to keep any random cops or nosy kids from running into him,
it was just about perfect. The perfect kill.

He would have preferred to be doing this from some nice, safe height,
Nathan thought. Like those girders up there. But he was still not
entirely recovered from the pneumonia, and the idea of a surprise
coughing fit or dizzy spell when he didn't have his feet planted on
solid ground was not appealing at all. He knew there'd been some
debate as to whether or not he was fit for this, and he didn't intend
to prove any of the naysayers right by taking a header off any sort of
height, nice or otherwise.

Besides, this was going to take all his concentration. Best to be
limiting the other demands on his focus. Nathan saw Sabretooth's
massive shape moving through the construction site and closed his eyes
for a moment, extending his own mind outwards. The tip of his psimitar
started to glow a dull gold, hazy in the light snow.

Feral minds were a pain in the ass, Nathan thought - and struck. It
was a mind-net, much like the one he'd used in Smichov against the
soldiers at the clinic. Justified now like it had been justified then,
part of him pointed out, and the residual unease he felt at the tactic
faded away. He created false images, false sensory input, blurring
Sabretooth's perceptions of his surroundings. It was harder than it
would have been with someone whose psi-imprint wasn't scrambled all to
hell by 'normal' standards, but he knew feral minds. Had one
himself, artificially restructured or otherwise.

No, he sent, as Sabretooth tried to notice who was waiting for
him. He's not there. You're on target. No one's between you and
your old man, Victor. Keep going.

The pain made things a little fuzzy, but Sabretooth cocked his head,
focusing on the group of men in important-looking suits. Jackets a
little too thin for the cold, better to get the quick draw with those
pistols they had to be holding. Pistols wouldn't stop him, of course.
Even with only one good eye, he could take them out before the first
one cleared leather.

There he was. The Man. The Senator leaving his car, moving for the podium.

Podium? Victor shook his head, trying to force through the clarity.
The snow wasn't thick enough to make this hard, why wasn't he feeling
cold? Almost like...

How many bodyguards were there? Six? Eight? He couldn't be sure.
This ain't right something ain't right something wrong wrong with
my head ain't seeing things right can't smell the blood gotta just go
for it.

Sabretooth rushed forward, claws extended... and closing on empty air
where his senses insisted Graydon Creed stood.

Damn it. Nathan took an involuntary step back as Sabretooth
shook off the mind-net, his awareness that the Senator was not in fact
right there clashing with the projection and breaking it
irretrievably. He'd hoped to hold him a little while longer, but he
could feel Sabretooth's thoughts shifting, the predator's growing rage
at being cheated of his prey, and Nathan wasn't Charles, couldn't be
sure of pulling off that trick a second time with Sabretooth aware
that there had to be a telepath out here.

Besides. He'd held it for long enough. Sabretooth was more than close
enough to where Cain now stood. Everything was going according to
plan. Now, to get himself out of here before he wound up catching
Sabretooth's attention and changing that.

#Kurt?#

#Coming#, was the quick answer, and the next second he was at Nathan's
side. A few seconds after that, they were both gone, back to safety.

"Nightcrawler, sitrep," Sam called over the comm. "Are you and Cable clear?"

"Affirmative, Cannonball", was the answer a moment later. "Clear and safe."

"This is Tactical, sir. Creed is confirmed." The voice crackled over
the radio. Agent Fred Duncan lifted his handset rapidly, switching to
the all frequency.

"Good. I want everyone to stay in position. Do not attempt to capture
Creed without my signal. If he make an attempt to break out of the
firing zone, be ready to move immediately." Duncan clicked off the
handset. He had two dozen agents spread out, including four snipers in
the surrounding buildings, and a helicopter in the air, although
currently away from the zone. "I hope your pals are ready, Kane?"

Garrison closed his eyes for a second, 'listening' through the
telepathic switchboard. "They are, sir."

"Juggernaut, you're clear to move in," Sam said immediately. They
needed to keep hitting Sabretooth while he was off-balance.

Sabretooth whirled, shaking his head to get the smell of brimstone out
of his nostrils. A setup, a fucking setup. Goddamn X-Men all
over again, this time someone was going to bleed, going to be torn
limb from limb, going to pay for this--

His internal ranting was interrupted by a fist smashing into the side
of his face seemingly out of nowhere. Before the feral assassin could
recover, Cain rushed him, peppering him with short jabs to the face
and torso instead of the crushing haymakers he was longing to unleash
on Creed.

"I know your smell," Sabretooth taunted, rolling to his feet and
spitting out a mouthful of blood. "Even in that big metal suit, I know
you, Marko. Big man can't be hurt, they say. Why don't you take that
helmet off and prove it, big man?"

Juggernaut just stepped forward, swinging his fists like
sledgehammers, narrowly missing Creed as the slightly-shorter mutant
ducked and rolled, the insults still coming. "Took me almost six
months to heal from that beating you gave me, big man. Bet that made
you just burn inside, knowing you coulda offed me, but Summers held
you back. You want to get your pound of flesh back now? Some revenge
for your little songbird bitch, huh? Or do they still have your balls
in a vice, huh? Tell you to go here, do that, don't kill - that's
right, they'll never let you. Even when you know you oughta. C'mon,
big man. Show me what you got."

Behind the helmet, Cain gritted his teeth, his blows landing with
enough power to crush concrete, but only glancing off Sabretooth as he
rolled and dodged. It was like an awkward, brutal dance - the
Brotherhood member gamboling through the construction site as Cain
smashed a path through the lumber and girders.

"You wanna kill me?" Sabretooth bellowed as one of Cain's punches
connected, the sound of bone breaking echoing in the cold air. "Come
on! Do it! Fucking end it! You want to! But you ain't gonna, because
you got orders, don't you? Big man's nothing but a pussy hiding behind
Summers' 'orders', ain't he? Because you know that if you don't end
this right now, every drop of blood from here on out is on your hands,
ain't it?" He drew himself up to his feet, taloned fingers beckoning
Cain closer in a mocking gesture. "Come on, big man. Finish it."

Cain's hand snapped out, closing around Creed's neck. With his other
hand, he reached up, pulling the black iron helmet off his head to
look Sabretooth right in the face. But the expression on Cain Marko's
visage wasn't one of frustration or anger. If anything, it was
amusement.

"Ain't gotta kill you, boy. But we're putting you down. You got one
thing right. I want to." He hauled Sabretooth close until he was eye
to eye with the struggling feral who was gasping for breath. "But I
ain't gonna. Not because of any orders or rules or anything Summers
says. I ain't gonna kill you because you got something worse coming."

The last words out of Cain's mouth were drowned out by the sudden roar
of thunder, the telltale sound of an oncoming sonic boom. And in the
moment before the crack, three words were audible as Cain tossed Creed
like a ragdoll into the air.

"Get him, Sam."

The advantage of flying at the speed of sound was that Creed wouldn't
hear Sam coming until he was right on top of him. The disadvantage
was that it left the reaction time for what Sam was trying to do
maddeningly slim. He'd only get one chance to do this right, because
if he had to come around for a second pass, the element of surprise
would be gone.

The crack of displaced air slammed into Sabretooth at almost exactly
the same time as a harpoon, held before Sam like a jousting knight's
lance, ripped into his abdomen. For a brief moment he was caught on
the edge of the Kentuckian's blast field, getting singed before
sliding off and down. A high-tensile cable, specially treated by
Forge to withstand the chemical flames, payed out from a spool at
Sam's belt. At thirty meters, the cable jerked taut, sending the
feral mutant spinning in midair as he got dragged along by the harpoon
lodged against his spine.

Like a fish on a hook, Creed twitched as he tried to claw at the
harpoon, its barbs dug deep into his flesh. Try as he might, he
couldn't get any leverage to yank at the pole, and the angle was all
wrong to slice through it, his claws just batted ineffectually at the
metal.

Take it to the boy, then. Hand over hand, Sabretooth pulled himself
along the metal cable, oblivious to the burning wind past his face or
the ground whipping below him at over six hundred miles an hour.

One clawed hand reached out, but just at that moment, Sam shifted
direction, the backblast from his flight searing Sabretooth as if he'd
faced directly into a jet engine. Clothes and skin smoldering, Creed
tumbled back, the cable jerking taut again and sending a howl of pain
from his one good lung, the sound lost to the speed.

The timing was perfect, as they were practically right on top of the
courtyard where Garrison and a host of FBI agents were waiting to take
the feral into custody. Continuing the shift, Sam bent hard at the
waist as if he were trying to do a back bridge in midair. He pulled
hard through a loop-the-loop, angular rotation accelerating Sabretooth
even further, similar to the way the outer edge of a record travels at
a faster relative speed than the inside edge, even though it turns at
the same rate on a turntable. When Creed reached the bottom of the
circle, Sam punched the disconnect at his belt, sending cable,
harpoon, and mutant flying into a reinforced concrete wall like a
several hundred pound sub-mach fastball.

"All yours, Dominion," he said over the comm, already able to see the
agents moving in while Sabretooth was stunned from the impact.

"All teams, move!" Duncan snapped over the comm. Kane was first to the
fallen mutant, his gun and badge out as he approached. His hands
twitched slightly, but the big mutant didn't stir.

"Well, look at this, Inspector Kane. It would appear that after some
kind of brawl with unknown persons, Mister Creed is here for us to
just happen on. I guess your tip was right." Duncan said, holding his
weapon aimed at Creed's head as Garrison knelt down. The Canadian put
a hand to the back of the mutant's neck, and Sabertooth spasmed like
he'd touch a powerline, and settled back.

"All right, Pendelton, read him his rights. Jefferys, Doc, he's all
yours." A group of agents and a man with a doctors bag came over. The
agents began to swiftly restrain Creed, first a finger web steel frame
to isolate his claws. Over that, full barrel hand covers, locked at
the wrist and then to each other. A back frame locking his elbows and
hands. Side leg braces, forcing them rigidly straight and locked
together. A mouthpiece, this one put in by Garrison himself, and a
rigid face shield overtop. The agents picked him up, straining under
the weight, and tipped him against what looked like an oversized trolley.
There three brace belts went on, at the hips, the mid torso and across
the shoulders. All six points were locked into the frame, as the
doctor swabbed part of Creed's arm to inject him with a sedative. It
would keep him under long enough for the transfer into his holding
cell.

"Take him away, boys Tactical, stand down. Good work out here today."
Duncan held a hand over the handset. "That goes for your boys too,
Kane. Make sure you pass that along. This fucker isn't going anywhere
for a long time. You have my word on that."