xp_logs | Voodoo Child: The Song of Erzulie

X-Force gathers to discuss what needs to be done.

The mood was grim as the members of Snow Valley filed into the conference room. It was too obvious which seat was empty, and the barely contained rage of both Wisdom and LeBeau had increased with every second. By now, news had gotten around the office about the other members of the school gone missing in New York, leaving everyone to wonder whether or not this would be the point in which their luck failed, and they paid the price for the dangerous life they'd chosen.

Remy LeBeau was already there, sitting with his arms crossed and his eyes distant at the far end. The glass from the office window he'd put his chair through was still scattered on the carpet out in front, and he'd offered no further explanation about it. However, for all the lethal anger in Remy's look, it was Wisdom's absolute stillness that brought the most uneasiness.

Pete waited until everyone was seated before he spoke. When he did his voice was calm and level.

"Right then. The good news is that we know where she is and who has her. I thought we'd got past the stage where people had designs on Amanda's gifts, but it turns out I was wrong. Who is some cow named Candra, who used to be second fiddle to Selene. By this stage I am long past caring about exactly what it is she wants. It's this fucking simple: someone has taken one of our people, we know where they are, and they are not important enough that going after them presents any kind of problem. They are, I'm told, bad and scary people."

He paused.

"Is anyone here frightened?"

It took an act of extreme willpower not to say something bitingly sarcastic. Marie-Ange was scowling, and fingering a deck of cards as though she was resisting the urge to shuffle them. "Does it matter if we are, so long as we can function?" She was more angry then scared, and it showed in the way she sat, tight and with her back rigid and straight.

Sarah just wasn't in the mood for any of this. She crossed her arms over her chest, and leaned forward. "Can we skip all the 'how do you feel' shit and move on to some sort of plan? Talking isn't going to get Amanda back."

"And welcome to my life," Sofia said, deep and amused. A breeze rustled in Marie-Ange's hair and pushed it over her shoulder. "Let the man have his moment of badass, children. I trust that there's a very complicated plot at the end that none of you could come up with or an uplifting moral. We're very frightened, aren't we Wanda?"

"That is one way of putting it," Wanda responded, gaze not wavering from Pete. There was a tightness to her and an exhaustion that wasn't physical--this was the second person she'd had taken from her in several weeks. First Jennie, now Amanda; someone had taken people she cared for very much and hurt them. And she wasn't going to stand for it anymore. She let herself relax slightly to look over and Sofia and back again. "Though I do vote for the short and simple plan this go round."

"Where is she?" asked Mark, his voice lacking any of the joviality and humor that so defined him. "And how much do we have to blow up to get her back?" He clasped his hands and held them in his lap to force himself to not fidget, unwilling to let any of the anxiety or fear he felt show through.

"I'd give the explosions a pass," Illyana advised, leaning against the back of her own chair, expression closed. "I believe experience will tell us that they don't exactly work selectively, which is kind of a problem when one of us is in there." She glanced over at Mark, then shrugged. "Can't say as I'm against the sentiment, though."

"I'm with Sarah and Mark. Can we skip ahead to the part with the explosions and pounding peoples' faces in until they give us Amanda back?" Doug asked from where he lounged in his chair, deceptively lazy looking. His eyes belied his posture, as they were hard and focused, steadily gazing at Pete.

"OK. I'll brief you all separately on exactly what the plan is, once we're en-route. For now, I just want to get this out of the way." Pete's voice hardened. "This is a killing mission. Gloves off. I want as many of these cunts in the ground as we can manage. I want them to see exactly what happens when you target one of our people, because I don't want to have to do this again for one of you in six months time."

He paused, and went on in the same calm tones he'd been using before.

"I am not going to order any one of you to kill, because I promised you all you'd always have the option to say no, but I do expect those of you that choose not to to stay out of the way of those that will. If you don't think you can manage that, then you need to speak up now."

Sarah finally leaned back in her chair, chewing not so gently on her thumbnail. "Oh good. It's always nice to get the go ahead for something I was going to do anyway. These assholes don't deserve anything else."

"What do we know?" Marie-Ange asked. "About the people there? What are we likely to have to encounter? Are they powered? Magically active? Likely to be on drugs?" She shook her head fiercely. "Do we need to send in some sort of scout to get information first?"

The dupe's mouth twitched a few times, but he couldn't seem to muster the breath to speak, and even the glare was going slightly vague.

Doug waved a hand in front of Skippy's face. "C'mon, stay with me, man, I'm trying to taunt you, you could at least have the decency to stay alive long enough for me to get to the really good imprecations..."

The dupe gasped softly, wheezing for breath, then went limp, collapsing in on itself, spreading another pool of red, and grey, and green, and other colors best not mentioned, across the floor.

Finally, the wry mocking expression slid off of Doug's face, to be replaced by abject horror at what he had done to the person wearing his roommate and best friend's face.

Doug shook his head, forcibly bringing himself back to the present. Severe bodily harm to the people who had abducted Amanda was one thing, going in with the express intent of killing them was quite another. Despite the bloody work the Snow Valley crew often did, Doug's hands were clean. His mouth twisted. He'd done his killing long before the Snow Valley Memorial Center was even a passing fancy in Remy and Pete's heads. "I...don't know, Pete. I just don't know," he said quietly, entirely conscious of the eyes of the rest of the table focusing on him. "I'm not saying that whoever did this doesn't deserve to have it revisited on them, but to sit here and say 'this is a killing mission'...I don't know." He stared down at his folded hands, struggling with his own inner doubts and demons, arms and fingers tingling with adrenalin from the embarrassment of having laid himself bare in front of his coworkers and the worry that they might find him wanting.

"You got to decide dat, Doug. Because dese people going to do dere level best to do dat to you, and we've got no time and not enough resources to fool 'round wit' being anything but lethal. If it's in our way, it goes down as quickly and as permenantly as we can make it. 'manda doesn't have much of a window." Remy finally spoke up. Part of him wanted to spare Doug this, but he quashed the thought. Of all of them, Doug was one of the ones that Remy still held reservations whether or not the young man truly understood the life he'd chosen. Being here wasn't a weekend retreat or year vacation from the X-Men. It was deciding to have blood on your hands, to get yourself dirty so other people didn't have to.

"What we dealin' wit' is a myth; a ghost story. Candra is a voodoo bogeyman, a witch dat's supposed to have been wit' de city since nearly de beginning. De myth aside, she does exist. Dere's a powerful group of bokor, voodoo practictioners who have gone de other way down de road. All de movies 'bout human sacrifice and de dolls? Dat's bokor ground." Remy tapped the ends of his fingers together as he spoke. "Whether she is over three hundred years old is doubtful, but even of Candra is just a title for de leader of de cult, she's been part of de power structure down dere for as long as de Guilds have existed. Even Tante can't confront de cult head on. One top of dat, zealots to help guard, many of dem wit' experience in Carrib and Central American conflicts."

"Finally, we have my ex-wife, and de Assassins Guild. 'donna would have a cadre of top level assassins. People wit' training since birth and experience in nothing other den killing. I consider dese people highly dangerous, even if dey don't have powers. Respect de threat dey offer." Remy shook his head. "Dis is going to be extremely dangerous, which is why Wisdom posed de question. Because against dem, de choice could end up being you or dem. Now, de only slightly good news dat we have is dat Illyana and Wanda think dey've figured out de ritual they need 'manda for, and why she should be alive right up until den. Wanda?"

Shifting, Wanda ran a hand across her face and nodded. "It took...a bit of researching but, yes, we think we finally figured it out. Remember those stones we found in Brazil, the ones we handed over to Stephen? Those were going to be used in a ritual to raise Selene--not surprising, actually, once you think about their origins and how we found the damned things in the first place. They are infused with Selene's own power but here's the catch." She sighed, quickly going over her internal notes before continuing. "You could not simply tap into the stones directly, it needed to be filtered through another human being. Which would explain the human sacrifices in Brazil, actually. But I digress. The biggest thing was the need to be filtered through someone, we're assuming alive of course, preferably someone already familiar with Selene. That's where Amanda comes in; familiar with the woman and, well, the vampiric powers possessed by said woman. Tie in Amanda's natural affinity towards being a mystic energy channeler with her former position as the Black Knight of the Hellfire Club and you have the only reason she should still be alive."

There was a long pause as Wanda frowned down at her hands and then glanced around the table. "That was as much information as we could gather," she said softly, "given the time constraints. It may be enough, it might not be. But it is all we have so far."

"Not quite," Illyana said, glancing over at Wanda briefly. Her expression hadn't changed since she last spoke, but her voice was quieter, and she spoke briefly, without inflection or sarcasm. "The last thing is, it's pretty sure to be fatal. Almost nobody's survived this before, in the literature we've found; beyond the magic, the ritual itself is hard on the human body. Which is not to say that we don't have time, but." She shrugged. "Not a lot of it."

Mark had spent the conversation looking down, unable to bring himself to actually look at any of his fellows. "What else do they need for it?" he asked, finally daring to raise his head, looking around the table at everyone. Resting on Sofia a moment, he was surprised to find her vacant, focused blindly on something behind him. The tone of his voice was still hollow when he continued. "The planets to be aligned, a special grand wizard, the Redskins to win the Super Bowl?"

"De stones dat were turned over to dem in exchange for de students and Angelo's lives." Remy said, finally getting up from his seat. "Which is why dis meeting in on a time limit. Other guild representatives have turned up de location of Candra's estate. De X-Men are going to hit de place de ritual is taking place in, but 'manda is being held seperately at Candra's. We need to get to dem at de same time, before dey can figure out somethings gone wrong, and kill 'manda in de process. Dat's what's at stake here."

While the others talked, Pete's gaze had been roaming the room, watching people's faces, studying their reactions.

"So that's the score, folks. If we fuck this up, then Amanda's dead, and god only knows what happens after that. I don't imagine any of you need any more of a motivational speech than that. Go and get anything you need ready, and we'll go get her back."