Blessed Are The Peacemakers: Not The End

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Scott deals with the assassins, while Ororo and Forge find their car being pursued. Things look grim for them and Barath until something unexpected happens.




Oh, the tree of life is growing
Where the spirit never dies
And the bright light of salvation shines
In dark and empty skies


Part of Scott actually hoped that the damned pyrokinetic could fly, after all this effort. He'd chased the assassin down two blocks and into an alley, firing optic blasts up at the running figure on the roofs as the man sent fireballs back down at him. But he persisted. Even if the man wasn't capable of following Barath's car, it had struck him that taking the bastard down would be a way of helping the Hungarians find out just who was trying to kill their Prime Minister.

But he couldn't risk too powerful an optic blast, not with inhabited buildings in the way. The various small fires the pyrokinetic were starting were bad enough, but if he stopped to try and do anything about them, he'd lose him. You've got to get down here at some point, he thought balefully, letting off another optic blast that seemed to miss by inches, if that. Running targets, dodging in and out of sight at a bad angle, were difficult.

Scott came around another corner into an alley running parallel to the street - and found himself slammed up against the stone wall of the building by a very physical attack from his blind side. He was fighting back even as his mind processed the attack, breaking the grip of the black-clad man who'd jumped him. His attacker swore in what sounded like Germany and reached out to grab him again.

He was good, and quite a bit bigger than Scott. But he did not appear to be a mutant, and it was a whole lot easier to fight for the purpose of gaining yourself a step or two of space, as Scott was, than to take your opponent down. And when the one accomplished the other... Scott fired as soon as he had the room, a quick optic blast to the man's chest. The man went flying backwards several feet and hit the ground in a crumpled heap.

And Scott flung himself back around the corner as gunfire came his way, bullets biting into the stone inches away from him. Fired as soon as he was down- He waited until the gunfire stopped then took a quick look out, knowing he'd invite more shooting but willing to risk it for a look at what he was facing.

Five more men, black-clad like the one he'd knocked out and the pyrokinetic on the roof. The shooters from earlier? And a car, Scott thought with a strange, tight little smile. Getaway vehicle?

The only thing better than getting one assassin would be getting them all. He gave his surroundings a quick, assessing look, and saw the possibilities. Someone's laundry was here in the alley, hung out to hang on a wooden rack leaning against the building. One of the shirts was even close to the color of his.

Could work- He took a few steps back and blasted it, sending it flying out of the mouth of the alley, the clothes fluttering in agitation. Gunfire followed it, but Scott moved in the same instant. While they were aiming at the diversionary laundry he was aiming at them and their car, with the broadest optic blast he could risk in such close quarters.

It did work, and very nicely. It flattened the five men, and blew out the windows in their car, smashing in one side. They wouldn't be getting up anytime soon, Scott said, and dodged another fireball that came hurtling down at him. I'd been wondering where you were-

In the process of climbing down the fire escape, apparently. The attacks on him had likely been a diversion. He realized, getting a closer look for the first time, that the pyrokinetic wasn't a man but a woman, tall and muscular with short dark hair but definitely female.

And obviously, not capable of flight. There were no windows on that side of the building, no escape save for up or down. His eyes narrowed and he blasted away the lower part of the fire escape, missing her quite deliberately. He heard her scream in rage as she pulled herself up to the surviving platform and took aim at him again. Back around the corner he went, wincing at the wave of heat that washed over him, even out of the range of the flames.

Bad call, maybe, to expect her to suddenly turn reasonable just because she was trapped in mid-air. And she was possibly going to do real damage to one of these buildings, not to mention the civilians in it, if he didn't stop her. He gritted his teeth and waited, even as the fireball was followed up by a stream of fire like the one that had blown up the car.

Wait for it... The bricks were blackening, melting. If she hit a gas line... But all at once, the fire stopped, just as he'd expected. She's taking a breath. He'd seen it in other energy-projectors and had guessed she might share the characteristic, given the irregularity of the fireballs she'd lobbed at him as she ran and jumped from rooftop to rooftop.

Before she could react, Scott flung himself back around the corner and blasted her, sending her smashing into the brick wall behind her, hard enough to break bone. Too much force, he thought, breathing heavily as he peered up at her. But her chest was rising and falling, he could see it from here.

Alive. Good. His hands shaking only slightly, Scott pulled his cell phone out, trying to remember the emergency number using in Hungary. Not 911, Summers... But he'd be damned if he could bring it back to mind.

--

"It would be best to head towards the river," Barath said, "and the Parliament building. It is the most secure place to be." His breathing was uneven, the gray tinge to his complexion even more noticeable as the car continued to race down the street, even though no further gunfire seemed to be incoming.

Callery shot him a single searching look but then leaned towards the front seat. "Your next two lefts," she snapped at Forge. "I'll call ahead, get us right in - " But she'd looked around automatically, to check behind them, and a curse slipped free. "We've got two cars coming up really fast!"

Forge reached around behind the seat for his satchel, pulling out a thick pair of goggles. "I knew there was a reason I packed my Just-In-Case kit," he quipped, strapping the heavy lenses over his eyes. Unwinding a coiled cable, he fumbled under the dash, pulling out wires to the luxury car's onboard GPS. A small spark of connection, and Forge's neck twitched slightly. "All right all right all right," he singsonged, slamming the car into higher gear and flooring the accelerator.

Projected through the goggles, a real-time 3D map of Budapest appeared before Forge's eyes, a path outlined in red winding towards the river. Swinging around the first left turn, he pumped the brake pedal, skidding as the extra weight of the car's concealed armor added to the inertia. "Left is no good!" he hollered as a traffic report flashed in the corner of his vision while he blew straight through an intersection to the sounds of horns and curses, "taking a direct route to the Szechenyi Chain Bridge, through Roosevelt Square. We can lose them in the roundabouts!"

Oh dear goddess, roundabouts. Ororo dug her fingers into the seat in front of her, watching through the windshield-less space in front of them as Forge negotiated around the slower-moving vehicles ahead. A quick glance behind showed that their pursuers were still gaining, as they showed even less care bursting through the intersection and down the street.

Forge yanked the wheel hard to the right, entering a circular traffic interchange around one of Budapest's many ornate fountains. Watching the map rotate before him, he focused on the quickest route to the bridge and slammed the gearshift back and forth, weaving around the other commuters.

When he saw the first pursuit car speed in after them, he took a hard look in the rear view mirror and concentrated -

Fiat Barchetta, one point eight liter engine, obviously turbocharged... He forced himself to look deeper into the workings of the car behind him that was rapidly closing in. Variable five-point safety harness - aha! - Nitrogen-propelled driver's side air bag with collision sensor located...

Reaching his left arm out the window, Forge aimed the pistol over his shoulder, firing one shot at a spot four inches above the Fiat's front bumper. The comparatively small bullet wouldn't do any damage to the car's engine, but if he aimed right...

...and he had, as the pursuit car's collision sensor was triggered, deploying the massive air bag into the driver's face, sending the car into a spin off the roundabout and into a brick wall. Tucking his arm back into the car, Forge spun the wheel to the left, exiting the roundabout and speeding towards the bridge, now visible over the low buildings. "Still got one on us!" he shouted over his shoulder.

"Then step on it!" Callery cried, pushing Barath back down against the seat as a couple more shots rang out from the car behind them. "Prime Minister, stay down!"

The screech of tires and blare of angry horns made it clear that their pursuer was ignoring everything else in hopes of gaining more ground. Grinding her teeth at her own impotence, Ororo could do nothing but brace herself against the seat as they wove their way towards the bridge.

Zooming through an intersection and scraping slightly along one of the concrete stanchions, Forge hit the bridge at close to eighty kilometers an hour, tires squealing for purchase. A straight shot would take them to the protected area around the Parliament building. Glancing in the rearview, he saw the driver of the pursuit car - a woman, which surprised him momentarily - lean out her window, one hand extended as if to grasp the fleeing automobile.

When her hand began to glow, Forge's eyes widened. "Brace yourselves and hold on!" he hollered, jerking the wheel from side to side in an evasive weave. A blast of energy crackled by the driver's window, close enough for Forge to smell burnt metal and ozone, and suddenly the road in front of the car detonated like a land mine, chunks of asphalt and metal flying.

The front end of the Maybach hit the hole, and with the speed of the car, only dropped slightly before the bumper slammed into the other side. Momentum kept the vehicle moving, however, flipping tail-over-hood and crashing down to the bridge on its roof. Sparks flew as the metal groaned, all the windows shattering at once and the metal roof supports creaking as the car slammed into the guard rail, then spun to a stop upside-down in the middle of the bridge.

Callery cursed loudly, snapping her seatbelt with one flick of her wrist. Ignoring the two X-Men completely, she crawled over to check on Barath, who was obviously stunned by the crash, bleeding from a gash on his forehead. His eyelids were fluttering, however, and a sigh of something close to relief escaped Callery as she checked his pulse and glanced him over for other injuries.

"Where the fuck did my radio go - shit!" she said vehemently as the car that had been chasing them came into view, squealing to a stop not far away. Its door opened and the woman who had blasted the road out from under them stepped out, moving in an almost leisurely way towards the flipped car. This time, the noise Callery made was closer to a growl.

She sent the door beside her flying off its hinges with one kick. "Try and get him out of here!" she snapped at Ororo and Forge, crawling out.

Forge groaned in response, eyes blinking against the sudden brightness as the world swam back into focus, albeit upside-down. Pushing his cracked goggles up (down?) on his forehead, he awkwardly wriggled out of the seat belt and reached back for the Prime Minister, grabbing the much larger mutant's collar in his left hand and bracing his prosthetic leg against one of the roof supports. The advantage to myomer-laced artificial limbs was the greater tensile strength than organic muscle, but unfortunately for Forge, the remainder of his body was merely flesh and blood. After heaving and tugging, he was able to get Barath mostly out of the car, but slumped to the pavement, exhausted. Somewhere in the crash he'd lost the pistol, and wasn't sure he could even see straight in the confusion, much less shoot. "Ororo..." he called weakly through the car. "I can't move him, what's going on?"

The woman who'd gotten out of the car was blonde, maybe in her mid-twenties, and at least a head taller than Callery. She called out something that sounded mocking in a strangely musical language that was not by any stretch of the imagination Hungarian.

Callery growled again and charged her, apparently fully prepared to run right over the taller woman. Given her mutation, it would have been a very effective way of putting the assassin down for the count.

But she didn't get close enough. She was five feet away when the woman dropped to one knee and raised both hands in the same gesture she'd used a moment ago. The blast of energy was blinding, and Callery cried out - in frustrated anger, not in pain - as the force of it threw her backwards and over the edge of the bridge.

The splash as she hit the Danube was audible, even from this far up.

Ororo had watched all this from an extremely uncomfortable vantage point in the backseat of the car, pinned in an awkward position and unable to move or help Forge with his extrication of Barath. She also watched as the unidentified mutant stood and turned towards the car, obviously intent on her original target.

A wave of panic hit Ororo - trapped as they were Barath was all but a sitting duck. The gun was nowhere in sight, nor would she be able to reach it unless it was practically at her fingertips. Almost unnoticeable in the stench of metal and smoke, the smell of ozone began to grow; Ororo gritted her teeth and rocked sideways against a protruding spar of metal until she could use it as leverage to push open the door beside her. It opened reluctantly, but before she was able to make any attempts to get out of the car she noticed the would-be assassin stop and raise her hands.

"No!" she shouted, moments before there was a loud crack and a bolt of lightning struck the woman straight-on, dropping her to the pavement before her hands had even stopped glowing.

The flash shocked Forge back to full alertness as he saw through the broken windows the assassin tumble to the street, spots of asphalt melted a glossy black around her. He felt a familiar tingle in his artificial limbs and despite the gravity of the situation, a smile teased across his face. "Holy crap," he breathed. "Welcome back, boss. About time."

The assassin was twitching visibly. Barath was beginning to come around, and from below the bridge, the sound of enthusiastic splashing was audible as Callery made her way back to the shore.

Still, it was the sound of approaching sirens - the cavalry arriving at last - that made it clear that it was finally over.