This Savage Land - Part Six: Resistance

[x-juggernaut.livejournal.com]

Times Square. Entertainment center of the universe. Where else would you expect carnivorous tourists to head for?



"I don't think that he was saying that at all. The implications of the study clearly reflect that the glacial shift was presaged by a...you're not even listening, are you?" Lorna accused Alex when she spotted the indulgent look on his face. She poked him in the side and dodged a businessman on a headset, racing down the sidewalk at breakneck pace.

Alex blinked and looked over her, chuckling at the hit to the ribs. "Hmm, what?" He said by way of teasing, even though he really had no idea what she was saying. He was thinking about his plans with Shiro that night. If he got home and finished a paper in a reasonable amount of time.

"The lecture! The one we just left!" She poked him again. "I was saying...ow...hey!" Another running businessman slammed heavily into Lorna and half-spun her around, "What the hell?"

Taking a few steps at a run, Alex caught up with the man and grabbed his arm. "Hey! When you run into someone, you should apologize!" The man gave a hurried apology to Lorna and then ran off, leaving Alex to watch him go and scratch his head. "Geez, where's the fire?"

Which was about when the screaming started. Lorna whipped back around, staring down 46th where it rushed to meet Broadway. "That's probably why." She took off running without a second thought, heading for the noise while sensible people streamed past the other direction.

"Lorna!" Alex called before taking off after her. Figures she would run towards danger and not away from it. Still, as he ran, he fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone. He had a feeling this was something the mansion would want to know about, whatever it turned out to be.

Being stupid was part of the job. It got harder to move quickly the closer they got to Times Square, horns blaring and shouts polluting the air. Frustrated, Lorna reached out to Alex and hauled him close to her. "Hold on." She lifted them both over the crowd, ignoring the gawkers. "Christ, you're heavy." Keeping them at a height that wouldn't kill Alex if she dropped him, they sped over the fleeing populace to Times Square and then stopped dead. "Alex? Have I lost my mind?"

If asked later, Alex would not admit to the small squeak he let out at being hauled into the air. "I'm a growing boy." was his retort before the growing noise drowned out just about any sound. Alex only heard what she said because she shouted. And he was thinking the same thing. "If you're seeing something else than two dinosaurs fighting in Times Square, then yes you have."

"But the dinosaurs are real?" she asked like she was hoping he'd tell her 'no, those are just you being crazy too'. When he failed to do so, she set them back down on their feet. "Okay, here's what we're going to do. You're going to get as many people out of here as you can and I'm going to...stop the dinosaurs. Uh...somehow."

A loud crunching sound came up as a taxi was crushed under the dinosaurs' feet. "Yeah, I'd say so." But before she could lift off again, he grabbed her arm. "No."

Lorna looked startled, "What do you mean no? Alex, get out of here!" She tugged at his grip on her arm.

"There's no way you can stop both of those things alone! I'm coming with you." The tone of his voice said he was not going to argue with her about this.

Baffled, she stared for a moment then looked over at the fighting dinosaurs, wincing as the tail of one took out a street lamp, sending it crashing into an ad for Avenue Q. "Okay, fine but you're going to do what I tell you. And stay back from those things!"

His hands began to glow even as they spoke. "I don't intend too get too close." But then he nodded. "Whatever you say. But let's do it fast before any more people get hurt!"

He had training now, Lorna reminded herself as she stepped away from him. He had training and he would be able to care for himself and control it--she had her own work to do and she couldn't afford to worry about him in the meantime. Putting him out of her head as anything other than a teammate was the hardest thing she'd had to do in a long time. "Take the bigger one." Extending a hand, she lifted the taxi that the carnivore--Allosaurus, her inner ten year old told her--had crushed, whipping it up and around, shoving it between the wicked looking teeth.

Alex gave a small amused snort at being given the bigger task but then was all serious as he looked around to make a plan. He'd rather not outright blast the thing, one ) because he wasn't sure what would happen and two) he wasn't sure he could control that big a blast yet. Still, they needed to get them to stop fighting, so he sent up a few distracting shots at it's head. The thing turned to look for the source of it irritation and Alex shot a long stream right into it's face, causing it to give a loud scream of pain, but it was dazed for a few long moments. Moments Alex need to figure out what the hell to do next.

The bigger one was also the one without the sharp teeth and claws. So long as Alex stayed back, he should be safe. Lorna, on the other hand, moved in. She had the allosaurus's attention now and she was loathe to give it up. As the dinosaur screamed and crunched through the taxi, Lorna lifted the light pole that the diplodicus had knocked over and swung it at the predator's massive legs, trying to sweep them out from under it. It was roughly like running a truck into a wall at full speed and she actually stumbled and fell at the recoil.

And of course that was also the moment both dinos decided to charge their respected annoyances. Seeing Lorna go down, Alex blasted at the allosaurus to get it's attention and then took off, both dinosaurs charging at him now. He hope Lorna took the opportunity to pull herself together because damnit, he was gonna need a little help here.

"Alex!" That was not staying back out of the way. Lorna scrambled back to her feet, then in a heartbeat made a decision. The lightpole whipped up and flung itself like a lance, spearing the smaller dinosaur through the side and punching out the other, blood coating the dull metal. The scream from the creature was terrible--pain and rage in one endless agonized sound.

The scream of the dinosaur (he hadn't heard Lorna's from this distance) made him pause and look over his shoulder to see the lamppost impale the dinosaur's neck. Of course, this gave the other time to catch up to him and Alex sped up, though he caught sight of an abandoned skateboard amid the strew purses, briefcases and the like that littered the sidewalk. He dodged to pick it up, avoiding a lunge by the angry dinosaur and quickly got it going. With the wheels under his feet keeping him ahead of the charging lizard, Alex turned around and blasted it clear in the face with as much power he dared when it lunged at him again, causing a dinosaur scream of his own.

With her new dino-on-a-stick, Lorna was able to spare another moment for Alex. "Damnit, Alex, don't hold back! It's a freaking dinosaur! They're already extinct!" Gripping the end of the light pole to give herself more control, she yanked it up and twisted, hurling it and the one-ton beast across the by now de-peopled square. Fragile ribs cracked and tore away from the skin.

"I don't wanna lose control!" Alex heard her this time and bite his lip. He had to do some fancy maneuvering to avoid parked cars and the dinosaur's now even more enraged lunges. He turned back to see how close the dinosaur was...and didn't see a shoe that had been left in the middle of the street. The skateboard stopped suddenly, throwing Alex forward to roll down the street, the dinosaur right behind him.

The light pole contracted down in response to her fear. She threw herself toward him, reaching for something, anything that would keep him from getting trampled. "Alex, just do it!" she screamed, her own safety forgotten. She never even saw the whiplash of tail that caught her in the side and knocked her back, slamming her into the street.

He didn't see her go down over the glow of his own power as it filled him in a rush of energy and poured out of his hands that were aimed at the dinosaur's chest, only a few feet over his head.

There was a loud BOOM and then it was raining dinosaur chunks all over Time Square, Alex sitting stunned right in the middle of it.

She was still gasping for breath that just wouldn't come when the first bloody gob of it hit her square on the chest and slid into her shirt, making her choke and wheeze. Dazed, she looked up and narrowly avoided another chunk in the face, turning her head just in time. Dizzy and aching, Lorna climbed slowly to her feet, making her way over to Alex. Across Times Square, the other dinosaur twitched out itself life under the jumbo screen that showed--in ultimate surreality--a helicopter view of the same scene. Reaching Alex, Lorna stared at the news coverage, then wheezed quietly, "We should go. Now."

Blinking, Alex looked up at her and then followed her gaze to the big screen. He gulped, his first thought about how Scott was probably going to kill him. Then, the skull of the dinosaur, or at least a major portion of it dropped down right beside him, making him jump. "Uh yeah...good idea."



Giant bugs. They're not just for the jungle anymore. Somehow, a can of Raid ain't going to cut it.



A murmur of Korean wafted from the small workout space that the Snow Valley employees had established in the brownstone they lived in. Snapping the weathered bamboo of a bo staff to his side, Doug bowed low to the front of his workout area, as if his master instructor was standing there observing him. It had been difficult to sit still ever since the return from Uganda, and rather than losing himself in his computer, as was his normal habit, Doug had taken to practicing his martial arts forms, with and without weaponry. As he rose from the bow, the staff snapped forward in a thrusting motion as Doug lunged forward, then he spun, and the bo bent with the force as he swung it in a circle designed to clear the space around him.

Even the forms he knew best were not coming easy to him, and he suspected that, were his instructor watching, he would have several sharp things to say about Doug's technique. That and probably push-ups. Returning to his ready position, Doug closed his eyes and stepped through the first few moves again, trying to make his movement smoother and concentrate less on each individual technique and more on the way they flowed together.

His eyes snapped open at a soft chittering coming from the air ducts. He shivered, even though it was fairly warm.

Uganda had unsettled Marie-Ange as much as it had Doug, but unlike Doug, she sought solice in less active ways. She had an easel set up in her living room, and her watercolors out, and was painting. She hadn't sought to paint anything in particular, and as of yet, she simply had several pieces of paper awash in random mixes of colors.

The chittering was followed by the scrabbling of claws, which unnerved Doug even further. The foot long bugs that pushed the grate aside and began to spill into the humid room were not what Doug was expecting, though, and he barely suppressed a violent shudder as his serious dislike of bugs kicked in. The bugs moved aggressively toward him and he shook himself into action, stabbing his bo staff down at several of them and then swinging it up to swat a flying insect out of the air and against the wall. "Since when did the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj open?" he asked the empty room rhetorically, backing slowly toward the exit.

She'd turned on her laptop and was using it to play music, and so Marie-Ange didn't hear any chittering or buzzing until several of the bugs had flown into her open kitchen window. For a moment, she blinked at them in disbelief, hoping they were just a strange symbolic hallucination. It wouldn't have been the first time.

When the bugs didn't fade away, turn into wandering mushroom people or offer some great portents of doom, Marie-Ange did what any sane woman would have done in her shoes. She ran for the bathroom.

If Doug had had time to stop and think about it, bugs invading a small, warm, humid space like the workout room would have made sense. But he was too busy quashing the freakout building at the back of his head, and squashing abnormally large bugs. He didn't know if they were mutated or what, but it didn't matter so long as his whirling bo staff kept the space in front of him clear as he retreated down the hallway. "ANGIE!" he yelled as he approached her room, part from a thought that two people could be more effective in protecting against the insects, and part from a worry about his girlfriend.

Marie-Ange couldn't hear Doug yelling, she was too busy wrapping a wet towel around her head. This was such an amazingly stupid idea, but she didn't have any better ones. A few seconds later, she slammed open her bathroom door, wielding a can of hairspray in front of her, with another two in the pockets of the bathrobe she'd thrown on solely for the purpose of having pockets.

She'd kept a book of matches in every room. Power outages weren't unheard of in the brownstone - older New York buildings were prone to them in storms, and besides, she liked having lit candles when she took a long bath. The matches, plus the hairspray made for an effective flamethrower, and the bugs that had been hovering outside the room were soon smoldering piles of chitin and wings.

Marie-Ange was very lucky that she heard Doug when he yelled again just outside her door, as if she hadn't taken the second to yell that it was unlocked, it would have likely been kicked open, because he certainly didn't have the time to go fishing in his pocket for the key that she'd given him when they started dating again. He ducked in and slammed the door shut on one of the bugs, causing it to spatter grotesquely over much of the doorjamb. Turning to Marie-Ange, Doug's eyes widened when he noticed that insects had made their way into her apartment as well. They widened even further as she used a match to ignite a long stream of flaming hairspray at one of the flying bugs, charring it and leaving it to land and twitch. "Holy crap."

"I know. It is gross, yes?" Marie-Ange said, and calmly lit another insect on fire, kicking the crispy corpse to stop it from twitching when it landed on the floor. "Where are they coming from? The outside?" She shook out the match and sucked on her burnt finger for a moment. "If this is Mark's ex-landlord trying to have revenge, I am going to be very angry."

"I have no idea, and really the only thing on my mind is how utterly -gross- this is," Doug answered. "Doesn't matter where they come from, as long as we keep killing them. Stung or bitten by giant insects is definitely in my top 5 list of ways not to go out." His bo staff kept moving as he spoke, his remarks punctuated by grunts as he attacked. "What I wouldn't give for a giant-size can of Raid right now."

"We need to shut the windows." Marie-Ange said. There was an open sketchpad on her kitchen counter, although the same could be said of nearly every flat surface in her apartment. And on it was one of the familiar dreadlocked little imps that she'd been doodling ever since joining Snow Valley and X-Force. With only a small break in her flamethrowing, she concentrated, and a pair of imps, still in the blue and grey of the pencils she'd used appeared at her feet to tackle a low-flying bug.

Doug took a double-take on his way toward the window when the imps appeared. Summoned imps, casting fire spells, wearing a cloth robe... "My girlfriend is a warlock..." he muttered. Then he brightened. "Throw more dots!" he yelled as he struggled through a cloud of insects toward the window. "But you're only supposed to be able to summon one demon at a time..."

Marie-Ange had no idea what Doug was talking about, but accepted that it was simply one of those phrases that he had gotten lodged in his brain like a splinter. The larger bugs had been joined by several swarms of smaller ones - although in this case, smaller meant the size of her hands. She directed her pair of imps towards another of the large flying insects, and concentrated on setting the groups of smaller ones alight.

"I am not melee DPS!" Doug griped as he spun his bo through a tight figure eight. The swarm of smaller bugs was keeping him from getting any closer to the window, as more of his attention was taken up by the insects. "Where's a bigass flyswatter when you need it?"

Now he was just making no sense at all. And the swarms were obviously overwhelming Doug a bit. "I cannot give you a flyswatter, but..." Marie-Ange started to say, dove behind her sofa, and covered her head as one of the larger bugs attempted to divebomb her head. As it passed over her, she rolled onto her back to try to swat it away, only to see the darker colored of the two imps leap from the sofa to the back of the bug and try to ride it like a bucking bronco. Obviously, the day had gone from strange to completely surreal.

Marie-Ange rolled onto her side, and took a new can of hairspray from her pocket, igniting it, and aiming it at the lower end of Doug's bo staff. Hopefully it would help him with the swarms.

The end of his bo staff getting lit on fire was...unexpected. "Fiery weapon enchant?" he asked incredulously. Then he began laying about himself with renewed purpose, charring much of the swarms with a single sweep of the staff. He managed to struggle over to the window and get it shut. "They came in through the air ducts to the workout space," he told Marie-Ange as they picked off some of the stragglers.

"Then they are all over the building." Marie-Ange said, with a fitful sigh, and a half-hearted kick at the corpse of a smashed bug. She casually set another on fire, and then pulled the wet towel off her hair, throwing it to Doug. "For when you are done." He would need it to put out the staff.

Doug extinguished the staff when they had finished, and looked at the charred tip forlornly. "Master Lee's gonna kill me."



When besieged by a superior force, Thermopylae was held by 300 Spartans. The Queensboro Bridge gets... two.




"You'd almost think they didn't like us or something."

Cain smirked as he adjusted his Boston Red Sox jacket, peering over the heads of the other baseball fans as they moved into the stadium. Around them, everyone seemed to be giving him and Logan a wide berth. Logan, sporting a Toronto Bluejays cap, looked more amused than anything.

Given that they were walking into Shea Stadium to watch the New York Mets host the Washington Nationals, perhaps their attire had something to do with the less-than-friendly reception, Cain thought.

"You ask me, I blame the walking wall with the Mets hat." Logan said with amusement. "You want to go grab seats, I'll get beer and chow." he said. "Bud all right by you?"

"Works for me," Cain said as they moved towards the box office. Despite the crowds, it didn't seem like they were letting people in -which was odd, since the first pitch was supposed to be in an hour and folks usually wanted to be comfortable well before then.

Leaning over the Mets fans in front of him, Cain caught a few words from the stadium managers who were trying to speak to the nearest fans. Namely "canceled", "emergency", and "evacuation".

"What in th' hell's going on here?" Cain griped, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Some kinda bomb threat, or...?"

At that moment, both he and Logan dropped their hands to their pockets as their communicators went off. Lifting them to their ears, both X-Men listened to the report from the comms room. With a roll of his eyes, Cain looked down to Logan.

"Not a bomb threat," he pronounced, snapping his communicator shut. "If they're coming from Manhattan, that means they're going to have to cross the Queensboro Bridge to get here. We gotta hold 'em until the National Guard can get through fucking Flushing."

Logan looked longingly at the beer stand, then turned turned away to face Cain. "Hold the line. Nobody gets through." he said with relish. "My kinda scrap. Saddle up, Juggernaut, let's _go_!" Logan said with amusement, already turning to run back to the truck they had arrived in.

Driving through Queens traffic was difficult enough without the backup from the bridge, and as Logan and Cain approached the double-decker structure, they could see city emergency personnel directing traffic away and setting up 'DETOUR' signs while trying to guide cars off of the upper level.

Pulling the old Ford pickup off to the side of the ramp, Cain shaded his eyes and looked over to the far side of the bridge, connecting to Manhattan Island. Whistling, he shook his head. "I'll be damned," he breathed. "They weren't shitting. Dinosaurs."

He looked over at Logan and shrugged. "I'll take top deck, you take the lower?"

Logan nodded. "Sounds good." he said, six claws sliding out from their housing in his forearms with their usual searing pain. "Likely to get a little messy out there." he said in the Understatement of the Geologic Age. "But we're gonna hold them here."

"Messy?" Cain snorted. "Have you ever seen the Mets play? This'll look like a cakewalk."

He stormed up the ramp and hurdled the barricade, landing on the upper deck of the Queensboro Bridge. About a dozen abandoned cars littered the four lanes of the bridge, and beyond them, the first wave of dinosaurs began to stampede forward.

"Hold the line," Cain repeated. "No sweat."

Logan took the low road, going for the lower deck of the Queensboro bridge. "I'll pick you up some chocolate and red wine, you big girl." he taunted back before dropping onto the pacement. His situation was very similar to Cain's but Logan threw himself into the fray, meeting the initial rush of dinosaurs head-on. Their hunting calls turned into screams of rage and pain as his claws bit deep into warm-blooded reptilian flesh.

Cain heard the carnage from below and smiled. As much trouble as Logan could occasionally be on a mission, right now there wasn't a more perfect place for the berserker. Or for Cain himself, he thought as he saw a large horned dinosaur, as big as a cross-town bus, charging right for him.

With fist extended, Cain met the dinosaur's charge, striking it between the eyes with a stunning blow. In the same motion, he reached up behind the bony crest on the dinosaur's three-horned head, lifting it into the air and slamming it headfirst into the pavement, embedding those dangerous horns into the concrete.

"Welcome to New York!" he laughed, bracing himself for the next rush.

Logan was having more fun than he'd had in months. He was by no means in a berserker rage, just howling in sheer joy as he butchered his way through the first press of dinosaurs. A few of them got their claws or teeth on him, but nothing critical and his healing factor took care of it handily. "How many you got, Juggernaut?" he hollered up to his companion.

"Nine!" Cain barked out, as a fast-moving biped tried to leap over him. He jumped, grabbing the dinosaur's ankles and slamming it bodily into the ground as he landed. "Ten!"

"You're too slow, old man. Fifteen!" he said, cutting into another one that thought it was being crafty.But it's sister took a chunk out of his arm, breaking off some of its razor-sharp teeth on his unbreakable bones.

"Cutting 'em in half don't count for two!" Cain shouted back, inwardly relieved that Logan was able to banter and not be reduced to the level of the dinos they were holding off. Redoubling his intensity, the Juggernaut threw himself into the tide of reptiles, fists flying like piledrivers, cracking bone and sending bodies flying off the bridge into the East River.

Ten minutes later, and Cain stood atop a makeshift barricade of dinosaurs, dead or dying, and glanced down the bridge's length to see nothing but open road all the way onto Manhattan Island. Smiling, he hooked one arm around a support cable and leaned down to peer onto the lower level. "Thirty-one," he announced cheerfully.

"Forty!" Logan replied, limping just a bit. With the number of cuts, dismemberings, and stabbings he'd done to the dinos, the footing was getting treacherous. Time to give a little ground, make the slipperiness work for him. Luckily the bridge was clear for as far as he could see. His sense of smell was useless right now - all he could smell was the coppery tang of blood.

Extending a hand down, Cain hauled his partner up onto the upper deck of the bridge. Nodding at their success, they heard another noise from the Queens side of the span. Whirling, both X-Men paused.

"Stampede?"

It wasn't a stampede. The last sound they expected to hear was... applause?

Logan sheathed his claws and vainly wiped his gore-covered hands on his extremely bloody baseball jersey. He was a vision in dinosaur gore and not a towel to be seen anywhere.

"Well, don't that beat all?" Cain remarked quietly, clapping Logan on the back. The crowd of New Yorkers across the bridge from them was actually cheering. It sounded good, he decided.

Another sound caught their attention however - the raucous screech and flap of wings from the air as a 'V' formation of a half-dozen winged pterosaurs cast their shadow over the bridge. Swearing, Cain tapped his communicator and held it to his ear. After a quick check, he glanced at Logan.

"Ain't none of the flyers even remotely close. We can't let those things get past the river."

Logan looked at the flight of dinosaurs, then back at Cain. "One way to get up there to knock them down." he said. "Fastball Special?" he asked, amazed that he actually was thinking about it seriously.

Cain looked down at Logan as if the smaller man had grown a second head. "What in the hell are you...?" Slowly, realization dawned.

"Throw me. At. The bomb."

"Fastball Special, huh? Get ready to fly, runt." Cain scooped up Logan in one arm, getting a few steps of a running start - then heaved his comrade like a javelin towards the flock of dinosaurs.

Logan soared into the air like a particularly misshapen brick, but Cain's aim was tolerably good. He flew right up into the formation of dinosaurs, using his claws to slash wings, bodies, necks - whatever he could reach. The effect, coupled with the blood and gore he was already coated with, was immediate and vicious. The dinos that he didn't get to reach right away whirled and descended on him like a flock of bats out of Hell, ripping strips of flesh from Logan's body. His screams were almost inaudible around the sound of the shrieks from the dinosaurs.

Mutely, Cain watched in awe as Logan seemed to defy gravity, stepping off of one body in midair to lunge at another, stabbing with his claws and using the same momentum to swing right where another biting and clawing pterosaur seemed to be.

Shreds of flesh fell from the sky, as mortally wounded dinosaurs plunged in irregular spirals to the river's surface. Logan seemed to be riding one of the fliers like a rodeo cowboy, one set of claws embedded in the back of its neck while the other slashed at the final remaining pterosaur as they all plummeted for the water.

Gravity was a very cruel mistress and she had Logan firmly in her grip. He managed to get most of the dinosaurs, with a few stragglers turning away and fleeing at their top speed. Unfortunately, he'd topped out his arc and the dino he was using for temporary stabilization was bleeding out in a major hurry. "This is gonna hurt!" he yelled as he started his long fall back to Earth. The plus side is that he was in no danger of landing on the bridge. The downside is that he was going to hit the river like a brick.

Eyes glued to the river, Cain watched as Logan splashed down, still locked in combat with the dinosaur. Moments passed, and then a waterlogged head broke the surface, hair matted down messily but still conscious enough to give a thumbs up.

The crowd broke into applause again as Logan began to swim towards Roosevelt Island. Cain found himself hooting and clapping along with them as he made his way towards the bridge supports to begin the climb down.

Meeting up on the shore of the island in the middle of the river, Cain found Logan, dripping wet and leaning against the brick wall of a riverfront tenement. Laughing, he jerked a thumb towards the bridge. "Seems we put on a better show than the Mets would've. Looks like the National Guard's moving in to contain stuff. Figure we oughta make ourselves scarce, yeah?"

"Might be a good idea." he said, somewhat woozily. Water didn't compress well and when he hit it was like going head-first through a brick wall. "Beer at Harry's?"

"First bucket's on me, runt."



And batting cleanup...



Both the traditional and modern secondary anniversary gifts were the most boring things in the world, it turned out. Cotton and china? Nathan had scoffed and dug a little deeper, only to make the gleeful discovery that the relevant gemstone was garnet. Which Moira happened to look very nice in, and hence, his presence in downtown New York, hitting up various stores looking for something appropriate.

He'd finally found a pair of moonstone-and-garnet earrings in an antique store that he thought would do, when he became uncomfortable aware that the atmosphere of the city around him was changing, and not in the good way. Still, Nathan made sure that he paid for the earrings and tucked them safely away in the inside pocket of his jacket before he stepped outside, frowning as he lowered his shields to get a better sense of what was going on.

That was definitely screaming in the distance. Nathan bit back a sigh and crossed the street to the nearest alley. Once he was out of sight, he telekinetically propelled himself to the roof of the building. It was high enough to get a good look at what was happening in the distance, and...

Dinosaurs? Dinosaurs? What the fuck? was his rather incoherent thought. Nathan opened and closed his mouth, his brain just... stalling. It would seem rather bizarre to him afterwards that he could handle ghosts from the future and the concept of demons, but not dinosaurs.

It took a full two minutes for him to go from stunned immobility to something approaching a proper 'whoops, I found myself in the middle of a crisis' mindset. Nathan shook his head and took a step closer to the edge of the roof, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the area, trying to find the nearest spot where his particular talents could be useful. As he did that, he was 'pinging' Charles, flashing the images of what he was seeing to the mansion. It was faster than the telephone.

Then he noticed the pterodactyls. Several of them, all appearing hurt to some extent or another, but some were clearly flying better than others, and two of those were chasing a news helicopter. Nathan swore, hoped to hell he wasn't going to get a tonguelashing from Scott or Ororo over this, and turned on his exoskeleton, jumping off the roof.

It took some effort to catch up to them. They were definitely dinosaurs, Nathan realized. Damn, am I going to be eager to hear this... One of them dove at the helicopter with an appalling shriek, and Nathan dove right after it, one glowing wing buffeted the creature, knocking it tumbling through the air.

The pilot and reporter in the helicopter looked as worried about the large glowing bird as they did about the dinosaurs. Nathan tried not to roll his eyes. #Find somewhere to land, dammit!# he projected at them, loudly - and felt the jolt as another one of the pterodactyls dove at him, bouncing off the exoskeleton with what was almost an affronted noise.

"Come on, keep right on trying to divebomb me," Nathan muttered, turning to head out over the financial district, towards the bay. Wherever they'd come from, far better to get them away from the city, and he could take much more of a beating than a helicopter could.

Some of the creatures, bizarrely, seemed to fall into an almost-formation below him, as if playing follow-the-leader. Nathan glanced back at them as he flew, confused until he noticed they were the ones who seemed to be the worst-hurt. Running on autopilot, so to speak? The injuries were odd, too, long gashes and punctures. Claw marks?

There was a scream from above him, and another pterodactyl bounced off the exoskeleton, stunning itself. Nathan rolled his eyes and caught it in the firebird's claws before it could fall towards the streets below. It just hung there for a few minutes, until it revived and started to struggle. At that point, they were over the water, and Nathan tossed it in that direction, wondering if a cold bath would convince it that aggression wasn't such a good idea. He didn't want to kill the things if he didn't have to.

He swore, abruptly, as he heard, then saw another news helicopter behind them. It was clearly a different aircraft, and as Nathan brushed against the thoughts of the two people aboard, he swore again in disgust, sensing their determination to keep going and get the scoop. Get yourselves killed, you mean...

A couple of the more lively pterodactyls turned for the helicopter and Nathan's firebird wheeled, snatching them both out of the air and flinging them at the water, harder this time. #Get out of here!# he sent to the helicopter crew.

It just kept coming. Nathan was snarling fairly evil things about the persistence of the press under his breath and trying to put himself between the rest of the flight of creatures and the helicopter when he spotted something odd.

Up ahead, two dark shapes detached themselves from the Statue of Liberty and started flying in his direction. Very large dark shapes. Nathan's eyes went very wide as they got closer and he realized that their wingspan was easily the match of his exoskeleton's.

"Well, crap."