Thirteen Days: Defying Gravity
Oct. 28th, 2007 07:18 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsThe way back.
It felt oddly like floating in a pool, Cain thought, watching the wind catch a pocket flap on his suit and set it flapping like a flag in a hurricane. Another quick breath through the oxygen tank built into his helmet and he threw one large arm across his body, reorienting himself face-down as he fell. Almost immediately he regretted it as he saw the world turning beneath him as he descended in a flat spin. On one horizon he could see the darkness of the night sky, and as he spun, he watched black shift to indigo and blue, to the brilliant reds of a sunrise and then around to the black again.
The whole world lay beneath him, with the horizons getting farther and farther apart like a blanket unrolling, and it was starting to get very warm inside his suit, he realized. Holding out a hand, he saw the material of his glove starting to glow red from friction, and the visor of his helmet was beginning to bubble and streak.
Oh, the hell with this, he thought to himself, taking quick, deep breaths from the oxygen tank. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see small flames forming along the edges of his suit, flaring up and burning out just as quickly from the speed of his descent - the very air being ripped away as he plummeted.
Closing his eyes, Cain reached inside himself, ignoring the fire outside and reaching for that blaze of fury within. He opened his eyes and let it out in one rebel yell, the black armor of the Juggernaut forming around him, shredding his burning spacesuit in the process.
The wind ripping by him threatened to steal the air from his lungs as he glanced down to see blue and brown getting ever closer. Ocean... land... ocean... land...
The world started to go red at the edges, and the sound of the wind began to fade along with all other sensations as Cain's lungs struggled to pull oxygen from the thin air. Finally, he let himself go limp, squinting his eyes to look skyward to the fading stars.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, he thought silently, his lips moving in the familiar words, pray for us sinners, now and at the moment of our--
Impact.
--
Scott had been perfect on the Soyuz capsule - in the simulator. But just like the glider, the simulator couldn't encompass the full experience. Or the g-forces, in this case, as the capsule shot through the atmosphere in a full ballistic reentry.
I am not going to kill us. That even went for Nimrod and the shapeshifter, who was shifting back and forth from a human form to what looked like a giant, scaly red bat-shape, as if he'd lost control of his ability in his panic. ... if I don't kill us, they might, was the sudden, shocking thought that followed on the heels of the first.
There was no real way to tell where the capsule was going to land, whether it would be ocean or land. Its systems had been at least partially scrambled, probably by energy discharge while it had still been attached to the station. Land would be bad. Too hard a landing, especially if the braking thrusters decided not to fire. But Nimrod would probably handle even a hard landing well, and Scott gritted his teeth, trying not to swear under his breath.
The potential outcome was not palatable. He could feel the Hungarian's gaze boring into him balefully, and there wasn't a doubt in Scott's mind that the other man had meant what he'd said above on the station. And if I go down, these cosmonauts are sitting ducks. The older of the two was in the seat beside him, muttering what might have been a prayer under his breath in Russian as he kept a close eye on the instruments.
"The altitude!" he shouted at the older man, on impulse, managing to stretch out a hand to that particular gauge. "Is it right? Yes?"
The cosmonaut, amazingly, seemed to get the basics of what he was saying. His eyes flickered to the chronometer, and Scott could almost see him doing the calculations, matching their current altitude to how long they'd been descending.
"Da!" he replied, sounding at least somewhat sure of himself, and reached out to deploy the braking parachute. The whole capsule lurched, but their speed immediately dropped by a significant margin.
Scott took a deep breath. He'd read everything his contact at NASA had sent him about reentry. Had studied the specs on the Soyuz capsules until they'd been burned into his brain. The two sets of information, coming together, suggested a plan.
Oh my God, I'm insane. But there wasn't time for bemoaning lost sanity, not if he was going to do anything about the chance that they could survive their landing but be killed on the ground by a pissed-off Hungarian. He eyed the readout of their altitude, and at the right moment, reached out grimly and fired the braking thrusters about three hundred meters early.
Well. One of the braking thrusters.
It sent the capsule careening through the air - incidentally bleeding off some more momentum, which was only a good thing. The younger cosmonauts shouted something that was probably "You fool!" in Russian.
Scott ignored him. He, like the cosmonauts, was strapped in. The other two, however, were not. The shapeshifter grabbed one of the empty seats with a howl, but Nimrod was flung across the capsule - and against the hatch.
It was the only spot he could be where Scott could risk this without damaging either the parachute or the braking thrusters. In fact, it was damned near perfect. He turned his head and let off two short blasts - one at the hatch, the other at Nimrod.
The Hungarian didn't even have a chance to yell as he was sucked through the hole.
Scott reached out again and fired the braking thrusters together, fighting back a wild laugh. Please tell me I didn't just kill us all...
--
It was luck, nothing more, that brought the module down in terrain that was largely flat. The Ukok Plateau was a particularly remote grasslands area in the Altai mountains, a barely touched horizontal spot among one hell of a lot of vertical. The module bounced, but much of its momentum had been killed telekinetically, and while pieces flew off in every direction, it stayed largely intact. As did its refugees from the orbital battle.
Jean managed to hold herself and most of the module together long enough for things to stop moving. Her mind was strained to it's limits, and she couldn't even focus through the force lines that covered her vision to make out the features of the solid world outside, but she could tell that the only forces around were her powers and gravity and that, finally, she could let go.
She didn't even manage a whimper as she passed out.
Terry barely had time for a quick prayer of thanks that they weren't all dead, though she expected the bruises to make her wish otherwise in a day or so, before she had to be concerned that it was merely a temporary reprieve. When Jean slumped suddenly and tumbled over, Terry leapt for her, putting her own body between her fallen teammate and the other unwelcome travellers.
The others in the module were slow to react. Mystique was slumped in the shadows, her eyes wide and baleful and fixed on Terry and Jean, although she made no immediate movement towards them. Katu eyed the airlock and then slammed into it with the weight of his whole body. The module had been damaged enough by reentry that he managed to create them an exit without too much difficulty.
Kamal, on the other hand, roared and flung himself at Terry and Jean, metallic hands outstretched.
It wasn't a focused shout, she was too startled though she should have been expecting an attack like that. As a result the scream that tore out of her throat was just a raw blast of power that shook the whole module equally, weakening its already damaged structure further.
Kamal went down with a howl, clutching at his head, Katu, who'd been staggered as well despite being farther away and concerned with making a door, turned and gave Terry a look that might almost have been pleading - if he hadn't followed it up immediately with a blast of that cracking blue-white energy.
Terry flung herself out of the way and managed to direct her next sonic blast more precisely, hitting Katu hard and driving him back into the door he'd been creating in the side of the module. The sonic vibrations tore the metal apart and the weight of Katu hitting it did the rest. With less care and more power, Terry repeated the scream on the wall next to her, simply blasting the wall out with a single full power scream.
Kamal was starting to pull himself up, bleeding from the ears and visibly disoriented, but looking no less pissed than he had been before she'd hit him with the sonic blast. Katu wasn't moving at all, and Mystique... Mystique stayed right where she was, watching through narrowed eyes. It would undoubtedly have been good to know what was going on inside her head, but the only telepath in the area was still unconscious on the ground.
Terry eyed them all warily as she gathered up Jean's body, resisting the urge to waste her breath cursing the fact that the other woman was absurdly tall and definitely and unhelpfully unconscious. Once she had a secure grip on Jean, Terry tugged her over the ragged, bent edges of remnants of the module wall and out into the cold Russian landscape. "Be seeing you," she muttered at the other three and then, with a quick prayer that this would work outside of the Danger Room, screamed--shoving the force down and away from her, letting the sonic currents lift her and Jean off the ground, leaving the others behind.
--
Their first impact tore a hole in the side of the module, Marie vanishing through it without a sound. The next one sent the station commander headfirst into the hull, at lethal speed. Magneto and Garrison managed to anchor themselves, barely, but there wasn't much left of the module by the time it came to a stop. It had fallen nearly two thousand feet down the side of the mountain, and even Magneto's iron will wasn't enough to keep it intact, especially when he hadn't managed to kill the bulk of their momentum upon reentry.
It was no longer recognizable as something that had once been a cylindrical module, part of a space station. Only half the metal shell was left, leaving its insides open to the wind and light snow currently gripping the Tokachi-dake mountain range. The three men left inside were likewise exposed to the elements.
One was unmistakable dead. Another stirred, slowly; Magneto, moving like the old man he was. His face was nearly gray as he struggled to his feet, staggering, but the driving rage was still there in his eyes as he surveyed his surroundings.
Kane stirred slowly, half buried in the debris. Finally, with a grunt, he was able to push the largest hulk of twisted metal out from on top of him. "Nice landing." He muttered, as he continued to free himself. Fortunately, nothing was broken, and his healing factor was already trying to catch up with his disorientation. He couldn't see Marie, only dimly recalling she'd been thrown clear as they tumbled down the mountainside. The crash wasn't enough to hurt her, and he guessed she would only need a few minutes to find her bearings before joining them.
The look Magneto gave him could have melted steel, but the Master of Magnetism made no aggressive movement towards him, even with a wealth of handy ammunition lying about. "Be glad I didn't vent you into space, X-Man." The usually resonant voice was harsh with fatigue as much as with anger. "It would have been a fitting end for willing tools of human governments..." Metal debris shifted out of his way, as he turned to head further down the slope, stumbling a little as it was. "As it is, take your life, for what it's worth. I've seen enough dead mutants this month. I don't care to add to the total."
Magneto's words were lost on Garrison, not because he couldn't understand the weary sentiment behind them, but mostly because he was already focused on someone else. The second Magneto had turned his back to him, the Canadian had been moving, accelerating on the mutant with his graphite baton extended.
The blow that he landed was textbook. One of the first strikes taught when using the baton is a kidney blow from behind. Landed properly, it not only causes almost overwhelming pain, but it also causes the muscles and nerves to lock up as a result. The person struck is left hopeless for minutes as their body tries to bleed out the shock and regain control.
One textbook blow would give him the seconds Kane needed to blast Magneto with his neural stunners, and wrap the explicitly dangerous terrorist up long enough to get him into a secure cell once more. As the blow hit, he could see the back starting to arch, the head in easy range of his hand.
But the back stopped arching, much sooner then it should, and things rapidly began to go wrong.
Lorna had her metal-enhanced leathers; Magneto, far more experienced with his powers, had devised something similar but infinitely more sophisticated. The metal particles in his clothing reacted instinctively to Garrison's blow, stiffening and absorbing much - if not all - of the impact of Garrison's blow. It was still enough to send the older man reeling, still stunned by the blow.
He managed to look back over his shoulder at Garrison, one dazed look that still had a great deal of anger in it, mixed with pain and shock. The shock likely explained what happened next. Reeling, he wasn't capable of any sort of fine control in his reaction to the attack. With the blow coming from such close quarters, as well, his instinct was to go for the closest metal available. Not any of the debris lying around them, but the collar epaulets on Garrison's uniform.
At the turn of the head, Kane knew something was wrong and that the old man impossibly wasn't in a near death paralysis. His lunge for his head, to put him down once and for all suddenly felt impossibly slow. In the treacle-like moment, Kane could see clearly Magneto clench his hand in a gesture.
On his coller, Kane was different from the other X-Men who wore silver X's, often with enamel highlights to fit their outfits. Instead, Kane wore nickel plated maple leafs, in part to slightly differentiate himself on the team that he was technically an observer with. It was those two leafs that Magneto's power found. Each leaf trembled, and suddenly ripped itself sideways faster than a bullet from a gun. Both of them crossed in a shared X of a trajectory through the middle of Kane's throat.
Garrison's head snapped back, and his lunge for Magneto was stopped as he grabbed his neck, blood welling and spurting between his fingers. Magneto had just torn out his throat, a detached and logical part of his brain said, through the fog of shock and pain as Kane fell to the ground.
"Persistence is a virtue," the old man snapped shakily, trying to straighten. "Stupidity is not. Do you truly believe I never anticipated engaging the physically enhanced at close quarters?" The metal debris shifted around them again, part of the module's hull tearing away and forming itself into a round, flat disc, large enough for Magneto to stand on. He stepped onto it, swaying noticeably as it rose into the air.
His look down at Kane was increasingly cold. He raised his hand one more, and pieces of the hull rose into the air, stretching and warping until there were half a dozen razor-sharp spears of metal taking shape. All pointing at Kane.
"Barely a mutant," he said, almost under his breath. "And perhaps it's time Charles paid the price in blood for his poor judgment."
Marie crested the hill just in time to watch the man she hated stare down at the man she loved bleeding on the ground. "Hey," she shouted, "you get away from him, you bastard." Pushing herself as quickly as she could, she flew towards the pair, the anger in her eyes flashing almost visibly.
Magneto's head jerked towards the sound of Marie's shout. He gave a quick, sharp gesture, and the metal spears whirled in the air and drove themselves at her instead of at the prone Garrison. It was clearly a diversion, however, rather than a true attack; he didn't follow through and guide the makeshift javelins straight to their target, but instead shot away on his metal disc.
Marie watched him flit away and for a moment, she was prepared to follow him. He was obviously struggling and there would probably never be a better opportunity for her to face the man who'd killed her and caused the events that had led to her first breakdown. But then her attention was drawn back to Garrison, lying in a pool of his own blood, barely moving. If she flew after Magneto, there was no telling what condition Kane would be in when she returned and she realized that wasn't a price she was willing to pay for her revenge. Letting out a scream of frustration she dove to the ground, ripping the fabric of her uniform into makeshift bandages.
--
Nathan wouldn't be sure, afterwards, just how long he was unconscious. It wasn't as if he'd had a chance on the way down to check the angle of the sun or make any other sort of assessment of the time. Nor had Clarice, who'd been nearly unconscious at that point - the last attempt to kill their momentum with teleportation had been too much for her. He'd had just enough time to be aware of the fact that those were mountains coming up very fast, and really, as a landing spot this couldn't be worse.
Then the glider had clipped a ridgeline and shattered. Somehow, he'd managed to trigger his exoskeleton in the moment of the crash, trying to reach out and grab the occupants of the glider. He'd caught them all at first, he was almost sure of it. But then he'd slammed into the rock himself, and...
I let them go. I let them... no, think. Think this through. Figure out where they were. He'd descended quite some distance, Nathan realized groggily, wiping the blood out of his eyes as he looked up, blinking, at the slopes above him.
Angelo. Clarice. Groaning, he hauled himself to his feet, stumbling at first. "Angelo!" he called hoarsely. "Clarice!" His head was still echoing with white noise - painful white noise. He looked upward again, trying to figure out how he'd come down, where the others might have... landed. Please let me have held onto them for long enough...
It was too bright out, was Clarice's first coherant thought, although it wasn't quite that coherent. More like 'bright bad!', but still. Raising her arm to shield her eyes she realized that her eyelashes hurt and so did everything below them. On second though, she realized that everything hurt above them too. Well, fuck. "Meh?" she managed to mumble, trying to roll onto her side and get up. That movement let her know that her ankle hurt more than her eyelashes. Great. "Stop yelling," she slurred, still trying to take a mental inventory. She wasn't doing so well, she decided.
Oh thank God. For one of the first times in his life, the mental exclamation was literal, and very heartfelt. "Clarice, stay still," Nathan called out hoarsely, and started up the slope in the direction of her voice.
"No pollem," she muttered, sitting up and closing her eyes as the world began to spin slightly. Maybe sitting was not a good idea. Idly she scratched her head and her hand came away bloody. "Ew. I gots blood in my hair!" she said as Nathan came closer. That she was a mess didn't concern her, only her hair.
There were times he really couldn't believe her. "I think your hair will-" Nathan stopped, blinking at the sight of one of the cosmonauts, lying ten feet or so away. There was no need to check for a pulse. Not when his head was facing the wrong way. Swallowing, Nathan knelt down beside Clarice to check on her injuries. "Hey, look at me," he said, trying to get a look at her pupils. Definitely unequal in size. "I think you've got a concussion. Does it hurt anywhere else?" He got a look at the angle of her leg and winced.
"Everywhere," she responded, focusing on him with difficulty. "Concussion? I shouldn't go to sleep then," she informed him as if he didn't already know. The random numbers in her brain were bouncing around in overtime.
She didn't seem to be in any immediate danger, but she was going to need some attention. "Stay here, and keep talking," Nathan said, then managed an unsteady smile. "You can manage that, right?" he said, trying not to wince as he rose. "I have to look for Angelo."
"What should I talk about?" she asked. Normally she was always making snarky comments and sarcastic observations, but she was at a loss for what to say now. "OMG! The dude over there is dead!" Did she really just use netspeak? She did. She truly was not in her right mind. The cosmonaut wasn't her first corpse, but that didn't improve anything. If anything, it made it worse because she'd been working to save him. And she'd failed. They'd failed.
"I know," Nathan said hoarsely. "But we're not. That's all we've got going for us right now." Because he'd be fucked if he knew where the hell they were. "Just... babble, Clarice, you know how to do that. ANGELO!" he yelled, more loudly.
The only response was a groan from somewhere near at hand but out of sight... followed by a faint but familiar-voiced "Ow. Fuck. Ow."
On the way there, he found the other cosmonaut, the one who'd helped Clarice give CPR to Angelo. He'd landed head-first on the rocks, and the impact had smashed his skull. Nathan forced himself to check for a pulse, to be sure, before he headed over to where he'd heard Angelo's voice.
In a crevasse. "Shit," he muttered, getting down on his hands and knees.
Angelo was still muttering to himself, a stream of profanities and pained non-words. His ankle did not look in good shape at all - as in, it wasn't in the right shape. He looked up, squinting against the light. "...hey. Help?"
He was talking. Swearing, even. Nathan's breath caught in his chest in what might have been a silent sob. "Awkward, boy!" he called down, his voice ragged. "Very, very awkward. You couldn't have landed up here? Hold still, and I'll be down there in a minute..."
Angelo's voice didn't sound good, raspy, wheezing and pained, but it was there. He wasn't trying to move more than his head, lying crumpled at the bottom of the crevasse, but there was nothing visibly wrong except the ankle. "Didn't... I bounced", he retorted, then started to cough.
"Yeah, well, you shouldn't have done that either," Nathan said, but then had to focus on descending into the crevasse. It wasn't as easy as it should have been. His one hand was definitely not working properly, and it just hurt to move, period. But he didn't want to try and get Angelo up here telekinetically, not with the way his head felt. It wouldn't help the situation to drop him. Again.
Angelo was too racked by coughing to answer for the time being, and every movement was jarring his broken or bruised places painfully. He blinked, trying to force back the greying of his vision, but then he had something else to worry about as blood welled into his mouth and he almost vomited it onto the stone.
Nathan's jaw clenched; he didn't like that sound. "Clarice! I don't hear you talking!" he shouted upwards, and then kept moving carefully down to Angelo. It wasn't going to help matters if he wound up injuring himself further.
"That's because you're not listening!" she called back, continuing her dissertation and cataloguing of injuries, complete with medical terminology and appropriate ways to treat them, almost all of which weren't an option at the moment. Idly she wondered if it would be easier to go from head to feet or just alphabetically by issue. Abrasions before concussion then hematoma and "My leg isn't a compound fracture!" she announced triumphantly. Now would that go under 'compound' or 'fracture'?
"Stay still," Nathan said, jumping down to the ground beside Angelo. He checked him for injuries, noting the ankle, and the difficulty he was having breathing. His jaw clenched. "I'm going to have to carry you back up. Can't fly us."
Angelo whimpered very quietly - it certainly wouldn't have been heard by anyone further away than Nathan - at the idea of being carried the jolting way up the side of the crevasse, but he just nodded assent, gritting his teeth. "Okay."
"Remember who you're talking to." He'd have been a lot worse off being carried by anyone else. "You'll get jostled the least on my back," Nathan said, lifting him upright easily. "Can you hold on?"
"I... think so", Angelo said uncertainly, wobbling on his one good foot even with Nathan's support. "Don't think there's anythin' wrong with my arms."
"Good." It was, quite possibly, one of the best ascents of a simple rock face he'd ever made, so determined was he to jostle Angelo as little as possible. Needless to say, however, by the time he reached the top, he was almost convinced he never wanted to climb again.
It felt oddly like floating in a pool, Cain thought, watching the wind catch a pocket flap on his suit and set it flapping like a flag in a hurricane. Another quick breath through the oxygen tank built into his helmet and he threw one large arm across his body, reorienting himself face-down as he fell. Almost immediately he regretted it as he saw the world turning beneath him as he descended in a flat spin. On one horizon he could see the darkness of the night sky, and as he spun, he watched black shift to indigo and blue, to the brilliant reds of a sunrise and then around to the black again.
The whole world lay beneath him, with the horizons getting farther and farther apart like a blanket unrolling, and it was starting to get very warm inside his suit, he realized. Holding out a hand, he saw the material of his glove starting to glow red from friction, and the visor of his helmet was beginning to bubble and streak.
Oh, the hell with this, he thought to himself, taking quick, deep breaths from the oxygen tank. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see small flames forming along the edges of his suit, flaring up and burning out just as quickly from the speed of his descent - the very air being ripped away as he plummeted.
Closing his eyes, Cain reached inside himself, ignoring the fire outside and reaching for that blaze of fury within. He opened his eyes and let it out in one rebel yell, the black armor of the Juggernaut forming around him, shredding his burning spacesuit in the process.
The wind ripping by him threatened to steal the air from his lungs as he glanced down to see blue and brown getting ever closer. Ocean... land... ocean... land...
The world started to go red at the edges, and the sound of the wind began to fade along with all other sensations as Cain's lungs struggled to pull oxygen from the thin air. Finally, he let himself go limp, squinting his eyes to look skyward to the fading stars.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, he thought silently, his lips moving in the familiar words, pray for us sinners, now and at the moment of our--
Impact.
--
Scott had been perfect on the Soyuz capsule - in the simulator. But just like the glider, the simulator couldn't encompass the full experience. Or the g-forces, in this case, as the capsule shot through the atmosphere in a full ballistic reentry.
I am not going to kill us. That even went for Nimrod and the shapeshifter, who was shifting back and forth from a human form to what looked like a giant, scaly red bat-shape, as if he'd lost control of his ability in his panic. ... if I don't kill us, they might, was the sudden, shocking thought that followed on the heels of the first.
There was no real way to tell where the capsule was going to land, whether it would be ocean or land. Its systems had been at least partially scrambled, probably by energy discharge while it had still been attached to the station. Land would be bad. Too hard a landing, especially if the braking thrusters decided not to fire. But Nimrod would probably handle even a hard landing well, and Scott gritted his teeth, trying not to swear under his breath.
The potential outcome was not palatable. He could feel the Hungarian's gaze boring into him balefully, and there wasn't a doubt in Scott's mind that the other man had meant what he'd said above on the station. And if I go down, these cosmonauts are sitting ducks. The older of the two was in the seat beside him, muttering what might have been a prayer under his breath in Russian as he kept a close eye on the instruments.
"The altitude!" he shouted at the older man, on impulse, managing to stretch out a hand to that particular gauge. "Is it right? Yes?"
The cosmonaut, amazingly, seemed to get the basics of what he was saying. His eyes flickered to the chronometer, and Scott could almost see him doing the calculations, matching their current altitude to how long they'd been descending.
"Da!" he replied, sounding at least somewhat sure of himself, and reached out to deploy the braking parachute. The whole capsule lurched, but their speed immediately dropped by a significant margin.
Scott took a deep breath. He'd read everything his contact at NASA had sent him about reentry. Had studied the specs on the Soyuz capsules until they'd been burned into his brain. The two sets of information, coming together, suggested a plan.
Oh my God, I'm insane. But there wasn't time for bemoaning lost sanity, not if he was going to do anything about the chance that they could survive their landing but be killed on the ground by a pissed-off Hungarian. He eyed the readout of their altitude, and at the right moment, reached out grimly and fired the braking thrusters about three hundred meters early.
Well. One of the braking thrusters.
It sent the capsule careening through the air - incidentally bleeding off some more momentum, which was only a good thing. The younger cosmonauts shouted something that was probably "You fool!" in Russian.
Scott ignored him. He, like the cosmonauts, was strapped in. The other two, however, were not. The shapeshifter grabbed one of the empty seats with a howl, but Nimrod was flung across the capsule - and against the hatch.
It was the only spot he could be where Scott could risk this without damaging either the parachute or the braking thrusters. In fact, it was damned near perfect. He turned his head and let off two short blasts - one at the hatch, the other at Nimrod.
The Hungarian didn't even have a chance to yell as he was sucked through the hole.
Scott reached out again and fired the braking thrusters together, fighting back a wild laugh. Please tell me I didn't just kill us all...
--
It was luck, nothing more, that brought the module down in terrain that was largely flat. The Ukok Plateau was a particularly remote grasslands area in the Altai mountains, a barely touched horizontal spot among one hell of a lot of vertical. The module bounced, but much of its momentum had been killed telekinetically, and while pieces flew off in every direction, it stayed largely intact. As did its refugees from the orbital battle.
Jean managed to hold herself and most of the module together long enough for things to stop moving. Her mind was strained to it's limits, and she couldn't even focus through the force lines that covered her vision to make out the features of the solid world outside, but she could tell that the only forces around were her powers and gravity and that, finally, she could let go.
She didn't even manage a whimper as she passed out.
Terry barely had time for a quick prayer of thanks that they weren't all dead, though she expected the bruises to make her wish otherwise in a day or so, before she had to be concerned that it was merely a temporary reprieve. When Jean slumped suddenly and tumbled over, Terry leapt for her, putting her own body between her fallen teammate and the other unwelcome travellers.
The others in the module were slow to react. Mystique was slumped in the shadows, her eyes wide and baleful and fixed on Terry and Jean, although she made no immediate movement towards them. Katu eyed the airlock and then slammed into it with the weight of his whole body. The module had been damaged enough by reentry that he managed to create them an exit without too much difficulty.
Kamal, on the other hand, roared and flung himself at Terry and Jean, metallic hands outstretched.
It wasn't a focused shout, she was too startled though she should have been expecting an attack like that. As a result the scream that tore out of her throat was just a raw blast of power that shook the whole module equally, weakening its already damaged structure further.
Kamal went down with a howl, clutching at his head, Katu, who'd been staggered as well despite being farther away and concerned with making a door, turned and gave Terry a look that might almost have been pleading - if he hadn't followed it up immediately with a blast of that cracking blue-white energy.
Terry flung herself out of the way and managed to direct her next sonic blast more precisely, hitting Katu hard and driving him back into the door he'd been creating in the side of the module. The sonic vibrations tore the metal apart and the weight of Katu hitting it did the rest. With less care and more power, Terry repeated the scream on the wall next to her, simply blasting the wall out with a single full power scream.
Kamal was starting to pull himself up, bleeding from the ears and visibly disoriented, but looking no less pissed than he had been before she'd hit him with the sonic blast. Katu wasn't moving at all, and Mystique... Mystique stayed right where she was, watching through narrowed eyes. It would undoubtedly have been good to know what was going on inside her head, but the only telepath in the area was still unconscious on the ground.
Terry eyed them all warily as she gathered up Jean's body, resisting the urge to waste her breath cursing the fact that the other woman was absurdly tall and definitely and unhelpfully unconscious. Once she had a secure grip on Jean, Terry tugged her over the ragged, bent edges of remnants of the module wall and out into the cold Russian landscape. "Be seeing you," she muttered at the other three and then, with a quick prayer that this would work outside of the Danger Room, screamed--shoving the force down and away from her, letting the sonic currents lift her and Jean off the ground, leaving the others behind.
--
Their first impact tore a hole in the side of the module, Marie vanishing through it without a sound. The next one sent the station commander headfirst into the hull, at lethal speed. Magneto and Garrison managed to anchor themselves, barely, but there wasn't much left of the module by the time it came to a stop. It had fallen nearly two thousand feet down the side of the mountain, and even Magneto's iron will wasn't enough to keep it intact, especially when he hadn't managed to kill the bulk of their momentum upon reentry.
It was no longer recognizable as something that had once been a cylindrical module, part of a space station. Only half the metal shell was left, leaving its insides open to the wind and light snow currently gripping the Tokachi-dake mountain range. The three men left inside were likewise exposed to the elements.
One was unmistakable dead. Another stirred, slowly; Magneto, moving like the old man he was. His face was nearly gray as he struggled to his feet, staggering, but the driving rage was still there in his eyes as he surveyed his surroundings.
Kane stirred slowly, half buried in the debris. Finally, with a grunt, he was able to push the largest hulk of twisted metal out from on top of him. "Nice landing." He muttered, as he continued to free himself. Fortunately, nothing was broken, and his healing factor was already trying to catch up with his disorientation. He couldn't see Marie, only dimly recalling she'd been thrown clear as they tumbled down the mountainside. The crash wasn't enough to hurt her, and he guessed she would only need a few minutes to find her bearings before joining them.
The look Magneto gave him could have melted steel, but the Master of Magnetism made no aggressive movement towards him, even with a wealth of handy ammunition lying about. "Be glad I didn't vent you into space, X-Man." The usually resonant voice was harsh with fatigue as much as with anger. "It would have been a fitting end for willing tools of human governments..." Metal debris shifted out of his way, as he turned to head further down the slope, stumbling a little as it was. "As it is, take your life, for what it's worth. I've seen enough dead mutants this month. I don't care to add to the total."
Magneto's words were lost on Garrison, not because he couldn't understand the weary sentiment behind them, but mostly because he was already focused on someone else. The second Magneto had turned his back to him, the Canadian had been moving, accelerating on the mutant with his graphite baton extended.
The blow that he landed was textbook. One of the first strikes taught when using the baton is a kidney blow from behind. Landed properly, it not only causes almost overwhelming pain, but it also causes the muscles and nerves to lock up as a result. The person struck is left hopeless for minutes as their body tries to bleed out the shock and regain control.
One textbook blow would give him the seconds Kane needed to blast Magneto with his neural stunners, and wrap the explicitly dangerous terrorist up long enough to get him into a secure cell once more. As the blow hit, he could see the back starting to arch, the head in easy range of his hand.
But the back stopped arching, much sooner then it should, and things rapidly began to go wrong.
Lorna had her metal-enhanced leathers; Magneto, far more experienced with his powers, had devised something similar but infinitely more sophisticated. The metal particles in his clothing reacted instinctively to Garrison's blow, stiffening and absorbing much - if not all - of the impact of Garrison's blow. It was still enough to send the older man reeling, still stunned by the blow.
He managed to look back over his shoulder at Garrison, one dazed look that still had a great deal of anger in it, mixed with pain and shock. The shock likely explained what happened next. Reeling, he wasn't capable of any sort of fine control in his reaction to the attack. With the blow coming from such close quarters, as well, his instinct was to go for the closest metal available. Not any of the debris lying around them, but the collar epaulets on Garrison's uniform.
At the turn of the head, Kane knew something was wrong and that the old man impossibly wasn't in a near death paralysis. His lunge for his head, to put him down once and for all suddenly felt impossibly slow. In the treacle-like moment, Kane could see clearly Magneto clench his hand in a gesture.
On his coller, Kane was different from the other X-Men who wore silver X's, often with enamel highlights to fit their outfits. Instead, Kane wore nickel plated maple leafs, in part to slightly differentiate himself on the team that he was technically an observer with. It was those two leafs that Magneto's power found. Each leaf trembled, and suddenly ripped itself sideways faster than a bullet from a gun. Both of them crossed in a shared X of a trajectory through the middle of Kane's throat.
Garrison's head snapped back, and his lunge for Magneto was stopped as he grabbed his neck, blood welling and spurting between his fingers. Magneto had just torn out his throat, a detached and logical part of his brain said, through the fog of shock and pain as Kane fell to the ground.
"Persistence is a virtue," the old man snapped shakily, trying to straighten. "Stupidity is not. Do you truly believe I never anticipated engaging the physically enhanced at close quarters?" The metal debris shifted around them again, part of the module's hull tearing away and forming itself into a round, flat disc, large enough for Magneto to stand on. He stepped onto it, swaying noticeably as it rose into the air.
His look down at Kane was increasingly cold. He raised his hand one more, and pieces of the hull rose into the air, stretching and warping until there were half a dozen razor-sharp spears of metal taking shape. All pointing at Kane.
"Barely a mutant," he said, almost under his breath. "And perhaps it's time Charles paid the price in blood for his poor judgment."
Marie crested the hill just in time to watch the man she hated stare down at the man she loved bleeding on the ground. "Hey," she shouted, "you get away from him, you bastard." Pushing herself as quickly as she could, she flew towards the pair, the anger in her eyes flashing almost visibly.
Magneto's head jerked towards the sound of Marie's shout. He gave a quick, sharp gesture, and the metal spears whirled in the air and drove themselves at her instead of at the prone Garrison. It was clearly a diversion, however, rather than a true attack; he didn't follow through and guide the makeshift javelins straight to their target, but instead shot away on his metal disc.
Marie watched him flit away and for a moment, she was prepared to follow him. He was obviously struggling and there would probably never be a better opportunity for her to face the man who'd killed her and caused the events that had led to her first breakdown. But then her attention was drawn back to Garrison, lying in a pool of his own blood, barely moving. If she flew after Magneto, there was no telling what condition Kane would be in when she returned and she realized that wasn't a price she was willing to pay for her revenge. Letting out a scream of frustration she dove to the ground, ripping the fabric of her uniform into makeshift bandages.
--
Nathan wouldn't be sure, afterwards, just how long he was unconscious. It wasn't as if he'd had a chance on the way down to check the angle of the sun or make any other sort of assessment of the time. Nor had Clarice, who'd been nearly unconscious at that point - the last attempt to kill their momentum with teleportation had been too much for her. He'd had just enough time to be aware of the fact that those were mountains coming up very fast, and really, as a landing spot this couldn't be worse.
Then the glider had clipped a ridgeline and shattered. Somehow, he'd managed to trigger his exoskeleton in the moment of the crash, trying to reach out and grab the occupants of the glider. He'd caught them all at first, he was almost sure of it. But then he'd slammed into the rock himself, and...
I let them go. I let them... no, think. Think this through. Figure out where they were. He'd descended quite some distance, Nathan realized groggily, wiping the blood out of his eyes as he looked up, blinking, at the slopes above him.
Angelo. Clarice. Groaning, he hauled himself to his feet, stumbling at first. "Angelo!" he called hoarsely. "Clarice!" His head was still echoing with white noise - painful white noise. He looked upward again, trying to figure out how he'd come down, where the others might have... landed. Please let me have held onto them for long enough...
It was too bright out, was Clarice's first coherant thought, although it wasn't quite that coherent. More like 'bright bad!', but still. Raising her arm to shield her eyes she realized that her eyelashes hurt and so did everything below them. On second though, she realized that everything hurt above them too. Well, fuck. "Meh?" she managed to mumble, trying to roll onto her side and get up. That movement let her know that her ankle hurt more than her eyelashes. Great. "Stop yelling," she slurred, still trying to take a mental inventory. She wasn't doing so well, she decided.
Oh thank God. For one of the first times in his life, the mental exclamation was literal, and very heartfelt. "Clarice, stay still," Nathan called out hoarsely, and started up the slope in the direction of her voice.
"No pollem," she muttered, sitting up and closing her eyes as the world began to spin slightly. Maybe sitting was not a good idea. Idly she scratched her head and her hand came away bloody. "Ew. I gots blood in my hair!" she said as Nathan came closer. That she was a mess didn't concern her, only her hair.
There were times he really couldn't believe her. "I think your hair will-" Nathan stopped, blinking at the sight of one of the cosmonauts, lying ten feet or so away. There was no need to check for a pulse. Not when his head was facing the wrong way. Swallowing, Nathan knelt down beside Clarice to check on her injuries. "Hey, look at me," he said, trying to get a look at her pupils. Definitely unequal in size. "I think you've got a concussion. Does it hurt anywhere else?" He got a look at the angle of her leg and winced.
"Everywhere," she responded, focusing on him with difficulty. "Concussion? I shouldn't go to sleep then," she informed him as if he didn't already know. The random numbers in her brain were bouncing around in overtime.
She didn't seem to be in any immediate danger, but she was going to need some attention. "Stay here, and keep talking," Nathan said, then managed an unsteady smile. "You can manage that, right?" he said, trying not to wince as he rose. "I have to look for Angelo."
"What should I talk about?" she asked. Normally she was always making snarky comments and sarcastic observations, but she was at a loss for what to say now. "OMG! The dude over there is dead!" Did she really just use netspeak? She did. She truly was not in her right mind. The cosmonaut wasn't her first corpse, but that didn't improve anything. If anything, it made it worse because she'd been working to save him. And she'd failed. They'd failed.
"I know," Nathan said hoarsely. "But we're not. That's all we've got going for us right now." Because he'd be fucked if he knew where the hell they were. "Just... babble, Clarice, you know how to do that. ANGELO!" he yelled, more loudly.
The only response was a groan from somewhere near at hand but out of sight... followed by a faint but familiar-voiced "Ow. Fuck. Ow."
On the way there, he found the other cosmonaut, the one who'd helped Clarice give CPR to Angelo. He'd landed head-first on the rocks, and the impact had smashed his skull. Nathan forced himself to check for a pulse, to be sure, before he headed over to where he'd heard Angelo's voice.
In a crevasse. "Shit," he muttered, getting down on his hands and knees.
Angelo was still muttering to himself, a stream of profanities and pained non-words. His ankle did not look in good shape at all - as in, it wasn't in the right shape. He looked up, squinting against the light. "...hey. Help?"
He was talking. Swearing, even. Nathan's breath caught in his chest in what might have been a silent sob. "Awkward, boy!" he called down, his voice ragged. "Very, very awkward. You couldn't have landed up here? Hold still, and I'll be down there in a minute..."
Angelo's voice didn't sound good, raspy, wheezing and pained, but it was there. He wasn't trying to move more than his head, lying crumpled at the bottom of the crevasse, but there was nothing visibly wrong except the ankle. "Didn't... I bounced", he retorted, then started to cough.
"Yeah, well, you shouldn't have done that either," Nathan said, but then had to focus on descending into the crevasse. It wasn't as easy as it should have been. His one hand was definitely not working properly, and it just hurt to move, period. But he didn't want to try and get Angelo up here telekinetically, not with the way his head felt. It wouldn't help the situation to drop him. Again.
Angelo was too racked by coughing to answer for the time being, and every movement was jarring his broken or bruised places painfully. He blinked, trying to force back the greying of his vision, but then he had something else to worry about as blood welled into his mouth and he almost vomited it onto the stone.
Nathan's jaw clenched; he didn't like that sound. "Clarice! I don't hear you talking!" he shouted upwards, and then kept moving carefully down to Angelo. It wasn't going to help matters if he wound up injuring himself further.
"That's because you're not listening!" she called back, continuing her dissertation and cataloguing of injuries, complete with medical terminology and appropriate ways to treat them, almost all of which weren't an option at the moment. Idly she wondered if it would be easier to go from head to feet or just alphabetically by issue. Abrasions before concussion then hematoma and "My leg isn't a compound fracture!" she announced triumphantly. Now would that go under 'compound' or 'fracture'?
"Stay still," Nathan said, jumping down to the ground beside Angelo. He checked him for injuries, noting the ankle, and the difficulty he was having breathing. His jaw clenched. "I'm going to have to carry you back up. Can't fly us."
Angelo whimpered very quietly - it certainly wouldn't have been heard by anyone further away than Nathan - at the idea of being carried the jolting way up the side of the crevasse, but he just nodded assent, gritting his teeth. "Okay."
"Remember who you're talking to." He'd have been a lot worse off being carried by anyone else. "You'll get jostled the least on my back," Nathan said, lifting him upright easily. "Can you hold on?"
"I... think so", Angelo said uncertainly, wobbling on his one good foot even with Nathan's support. "Don't think there's anythin' wrong with my arms."
"Good." It was, quite possibly, one of the best ascents of a simple rock face he'd ever made, so determined was he to jostle Angelo as little as possible. Needless to say, however, by the time he reached the top, he was almost convinced he never wanted to climb again.
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