xp_logs | These Earthly Things

Angelo is trying to fix things with Amanda when they're interrupted by a sudden visitor.

It was hopeless.

With a sigh, Amanda closed her laptop and flopped back onto the couch, laying her arm over her aching eyes. The Church of Humanity were, as far as she could tell, bigots and lunatics, but they weren't killers. And certainly they weren't going around crucifying people. She was going to have to admit defeat and just hope Adler's prophecy was about another stretchy-skinned mutant. It had seemed so right, tho'.

She was just slipping into exhausted sleep when there came a knocking at the door. Without uncovering her eyes, she called out: "It's open!"

It clicked open a second later, and Angelo stepped into the room and closed it behind him. "...hey", he said quietly.

Amanda bolted upright, almost knocking several items off the couch as she did. She looked a mess, she knew, hair in a loose ponytail with half of it escaping in wisps, wearing one of Angelo's t-shirts that he'd left at one point, the garment far too big for her, threadbare jeans with both knees ripped. "Um, hi," she said, confused as to why he was suddenly there. It had been a while since he'd last visited. "Is there... is something up?"

"No", he assured her hastily. "Well... not that kind of somethin'. No crisis, I just wanted to see you."

"You did?" Amanda's face flushed, and she scrambled up off the couch, brushing at her hair self-consciously. "Um, sorry, I didn't... Come in, sorry things are such a mess, I've been..." She glanced up at the wall she'd been using as a pinboard, covered with articles and photos and sticky notes relating to the Church. "Ah, personal project." She stopped, flustered and confused and not really sure what she was supposed to do now. She didn't want to start another fight.

He followed her eyes to the makeshift board, blinked, then looked back at her. "Yeah, I, uh... Alejandra. Told me I was bein' dumb - an' other things - an' the only way to fix this was... fix it."

She bit her lip. More talking? They'd tried that, and she'd put her foot in it. And since when was he so chummy with Alejandra that she was giving him relationship advice? "I want to," she said at last. "Fix it, I mean. But..." She looked at him helplessly. "I don't know how. Every time I say something, it's the wrong thing."

"I didn't come for a fight, or anythin'", he said gently. "I guess I just... came here to be here."

"I don't like it when we fight," she agreed softly. "Ange... can you just...?" She held her arms out to him.

He stepped forward without hesitation and wrapped his arms around her tightly.

The tender moment was abruptly shattered as a persistent and insistent knocking came from Amanda's door.

Amanda made a protesting noise, and lifted her head from where she'd had her face buried against his shoulder. "The fuck?" she complained, disengaging and moving to open the door. "All right, all right, no need to break the door dow--" she grumbled, but stopped in mid-word as she opened the door.

Miguel was on the other side of the door, cradling one arm against his body and slightly hunched over. His clothes were scuffed and ripped, and several bruises and abrasions could be seen through the tears. "Hola," he said quietly to Amanda. Seeing Angelo in the apartment, his attention immediately shifted to the other man. "Those Church of Humanity putanos took Professor Lee and Alejandra."

Angelo's expression changed instantly, from surprise and worry to pure stony - and murderous - grimness. "You know where they went?" he demanded.

"Let me get him patched up before we go charging off," Amanda said quietly but firmly, taking Miguel by the good arm and drawing him inside. "Sit on the couch and tell Angelo what happened. I'll grab the first aid kit," she said briskly, steering him in the direction of the battered piece of furniture. "Try not to bleed all over the pile of books at the end." And with that, she bustled off into the bathroom.

Miguel tried to protest that he would be okay, but his sharp breathing belied the claim before it even left his mouth. He allowed himself to be bustled onto the couch, where he sat very gingerly and attempted not to move. His eyes bored in on Angelo with an intensity that bordered on feverish. "You know they trashed the center a little while back. We got everything fixed, even got some reporters come by and do a piece. Professor Lee was staying late, and they hit us walking to his car. Bats, tire irons, all of it. They left me behind, but I'm tougher than they thought, que no?" He straightened and bared his teeth, then slumped back against the couch. "Looks like I need your help again, ese."

"An' you'll have it", Angelo promised him, eyes somehow both dark and blazing. "We'll get her back, Miguel, an' they are gonna pay for this." He looked up at Amanda. "I'll fix him up. You go raise the others."

Amanda nodded, handing him the remarkably well-stocked field first aid kit she carried. "You got anything of hers?" she asked Miguel. "If you do, I'll be able to manage a location spell. And unless they had a car or something, they won't have been able to get far, not with two unconscious bodies to haul around."

Miguel dug into his pocket and pulled out a small silver necklace, with a few smudges of blood on it. He handed it mutely to Amanda, and watched her as she left the apartment. Then he turned to Angelo, who had a spool of gauze in his hands. "Just like old times, si?"

That got a wry grin as Angelo went to work on his wrist. "Just like old times, amigo."

Amanda tracks the abductors to the old Morlock tunnels, and Sarah leads the Junior Trenchcoats - and Angelo and Miguel - to the spot. Things are about to get ugly.

Light glimmered up ahead, not bright, but bright enough after the long dark of the tunnels. The sound of voices chanting accompanied it, eliciting an eyeroll from Amanda; cults were so bloody predictable.

Sarah ran a hand against the wall, the bone on her fingers making an all too familiar scratching and clicking against the cold stone. She knew exactly where they were, and where the cultists were-- not just because there was only one place it would really make sense for them to be, but because she knew how the sound moved in these tunnels. The sounds came from a large room up ahead, not where most of the violence had happened years before, but the idea that they were using her tunnels still grated on her nerves. She dropped her voice as low as she could manage. "The way we're going in is the only way out. There's a door to the upper levels just past here, but it's usually stuck shut."

Jubilee's eyes had taken some time to adjust to the darkness in the tunnels, but even when they had she found it easier to simply keep an eye on the person in front of her and the small area around her than attempting to see much further.

"Stuck how?" Jubilee asked, her voice, not a whisper but soft all the same. Locked doors weren't much of a problem, she figured but the sound of any attempt to open it by force might be a problem.

"Stuck in ways that explosions get rid of," Mark replied, lightning briefly dancing on his fingertips. "Easy way out for us if we need it, but I say we keep it closed for now so they don't have another escape route."

Angelo nodded, agreeing with Mark. "I don't want any of them gettin' out of here free if we can help it. One way or another."

Talk. Too much talk, not enough action. "Mira, enough runnin' our yaps. They could be killing Alejandra right now in there. Vamonos." He made to move past the group and charge ahead towards the chanting.

Angelo put out a hand, hard against his friend's shoulder. "Strategy, Miguel. You remember that, right? We go in together an' we go in slow, 'til we get a better look. An' that, we can do now. Let's go."

Jubilee hung towards the back, letting the others move forward before she moved on as well. She figured the more experienced of the group were better off at the front, and she could watch their backs as they went in.

"Might work better if we use these upper levels," Amanda murmured thoughtfully. "Stick the people with the long-range powers up there for covering fire, while the rest of us charge?" She glanced at Marie-Ange for confirmation.

"It will divide their attention, yes." Marie-Ange agreed. She'd been unusually quiet since entering the tunnels, almost lost in thought. "I think, both of you who can make explosions take the upper level. If we have to retreat, keeping the cultists from following is valuable, and you would bring up the rear as cover."

"Okay", Angelo said flatly. "We go with that plan. Jubilee and Mark, you're with me, up top. The rest of you, take the ground level. Angie, Amanda, get the shields ready in case they've got guns or stuff they can throw."

Jubilee nodded, looking behind them again to make sure they were alone. It wasn't paranoia when people really were out to get you and she didn't want anyone sneaking up on them. She expected Angelo and Mark would be able to lead them wherever they were meant to go without her input.

There's a plan. Too bad it doesn't get used.

Amanda watched Angelo and the others slip away silently, then turned to Marie-Ange, Sarah and Miguel. "Shielders first, since we don't know 100% what's in there?" she suggested.

Marie-Ange shook her head slightly. "We do not know if more are coming. I would like one of us in the back." She stood quite still for a moment, thinking. "Sarah first, and then me. If something comes up in front of us, we should have notice. And then Miguel, and then you." He was, after all, only human. Not that she would say that aloud. "Also, if we need to retreat, I would like the stronger shield in the back, to fall back into."

While part of him recognized that the three women with him had mutant powers and he didn't, it rubbed at Miguel's male Latino pride to be pushed aside in the decision-making process. He grunted and scowled, his arms crossed over his chest.

Sarah gave him an appraising look, then rolled her eyes at his reaction. "Down boy. Nobody said you don't get to hurt anybody." She pulled a bone from her back, which came out slick and red around the end. "I imagine there's going to be plenty to go around."

Amanda nodded and clapped her hands softly together, creating a wall of magic behind the small group. They began to move forward... and then there was a scream, a long, keening wail of purest agony. The witch went pale - she knew that voice.

The voice was even more familiar to Miguel - it was Alejandra in there, screaming as if she were in excruciating pain. The plan forgotten in the red haze that came over his mind, he shouldered Amanda aside and charged ahead into the light. His sister needed him.

What he saw was horrific - there was an altar at one end of the huge room, constructed of old bones from the remaining Morlocks, but that wasn't the worst. The worst was the crosses lined along the wall below the balcony, each bearing the body of an obvious mutant. Only one of the victims was still moving - most of the others had reached various stages of decay. And at the end of the line, furthest from their entrance, was Alejandra.

The nails were already in her wrists, and the cult were in the process of propping her cross against the wall.

***

Angelo led the way to the upper levels, only glancing back at the other two once in a while. "I want you two to stay up here", he told them. "Throw everythin' you can at the bad guys from where they can't get you so easy. Me, I'm gonna go down the fast way."

Mark's hand was briefly illuminated when he pressed the play button, and he slipped his iPod back into his pocket. He held up a hand, crackling with electricity. "Just say when," he said.

Jubilee had already started to glow with multi-coloured sparkles, sending them running up and down her arms to create bigger sparks. She'd be ready to let loose when they were needed, which would be soon she was hoping. She hated standing around, it always made the situation seem twice as tense. "Right, plan agreed, now let's go already. Before fate decides what we really need is some cultists attacking from behind."

"If they do", Angelo said with a wolfish smile, "feel free to kill them. Let's go." And he headed for the "balcony" overlooking the large room.

Jubilee might have blinked at an X-man giving a command to kill people without there being absolutely no other choice but she supposed it wasn't completely surprising considering Angelo's background. Still, she'd been able to get through life without killing people without need up till now and she wasn't going to start making an exception yet. She had a feeling that this was going to be one of those necessary times, but it didn't mean she had to like it.

"Try not to get too happy go lucky with the killing, dude. We do want some of them to survive for questioning, I assume." she asked simply, moving up towards the lip of the balcony to get a better view of below.

"Give 'em to Rem . . ." Mark's comment was drowned by the sudden piercing shriek. He pushed forward, and the scene he saw would have made a weaker stomach lose it. As it was, it left him speechless. All he could say was "When" and he held out his hands. The thunder clap that accompanied the lightning echoed through the sewers, and one of the cultists holding the cross fell to the floor, twitching.

Angelo was standing frozen at the edge of the balcony, but not for long. He moved abruptly, not taking his eyes off the scene below, and climbed up on the ledge. "Time I was goin'. You know what to do." He spread out the skin of his arms and leapt, counting on the disturbed air of his own movement to carry him where he had in mind.

***

Marie-Ange had lunged to stop Miguel as he ran forward, but without success, stumbling as she tried to grab at him. "Someone stop him!" She snapped, catching herself against the wall.

Amanda was stumbling from the shouldering, and Sarah was too far away. Miguel charged past them all, out of the tunnel and into the room, roaring in rage at the animals that were torturing and killing his sister. He nearly made it to the cluster of startled cultists before two sharp reports rang out. Miguel staggered, looking down dumbfounded at the red stain growing on his shirt. He looked back up and took another few tottering steps, reaching toward Alejandra before collapsing to the ground.

At the same moment, Angelo landed on the upper spar of Alejandra's cross, draped across it by the skin of his arms, and whispered something hasty and comforting in her ear in Spanish. Then he looked up and froze again, staring in horror.

"MIGUEL!"

The next moment, he'd scrambled onto his feet on the spar, then taken "flight" again, aiming straight for the gunman.

His booted feet cracked solidly into the back of the man's neck.

Amanda shoved forward, using her shield to physically push aside the cultists massing against them. "I'll get Miguel!" she shouted to Marie-Ange and Sarah. "I can keep him safe!"

"Son of a motherfucking bitch." Sarah hissed, running straight for the closest cultists. One of them grabbed for his gun, shakily, and she ran directly into the other one, her bony shoulder hitting him hard in his midsection, knocking the air out of him and into the gunman. She lashed out with a sharp bone-covered hand, sending the gun flying across the floor. She swung the bone club at him and it connected with his temple, causing him to crumple to the ground. "Who the fuck told you you could just move right in and use my tunnels?"

"I do not suggest you actually answer her." Marie-Ange said calmly, as if to the air itself. "It was a rhetorical question." Calm tone or not, she had a imaged staff out, using it to strike a third cultist in the knees and back. "I would be angry too, if I were her. Perhaps you may want to run now."

The room was large and shadowy, and full of zealots, it seemed. Ordinary-looking men, for the most part, almost nondescript, but they fought back viciously. They seemed to know the game was up, and were determined to take the small group of mutants with them.

Amanda might have some trouble getting to Miguel, on account of Angelo was standing over him, face blank, with a gun in his hand - which he hadn't yet fired - and lashing out with razor-sharp strips of skin from the other hand.

Swearing under her breath, Amanda used her shield to shove a cultist forcefully into a wall - there was the snap of bone and the man screamed, falling limply to the ground. "Angelo!" she shouted, trying to get his attention. "I'll take care of him! You help Alejandra! You've got to get her down off that fucking thing before she suffocates and I'm not strong enough!"

That got through to him as few things could have, in that moment. "Alejita", he muttered, eyes snapping up towards her, and then he was moving. He hadn't lowered the gun, and he screamed as he ran. "Out of my way, chingados, or I swear I'll kill you all!"

Several of the cultists, for whatever reason, were too slow to obey even faced with a bloodied and armed mutant charging straight at them. Two fell with bullets in their knees, one shot in the foot, and at least one more with a vicious slash to the face and body. And then there were no more between him and the cross.

He took instant hold of it, trying to lower it to the ground.

Amanda, by Miguel's side, realised two things. One, Miguel was losing a lot of blood, and two, Angelo wasn't strong enough to move the cross and Alejandra's weight on his own. Pressing her hand on the wound and looking desperately around for help, she caught sight of Doctor Lee, who she recognised from the media, watching the whole scene from a curled-up position behind the grisly altar of bones. "You!" she said, pointing at him with a bloody hand. "Get over here and put pressure on this!"

Everything's going to hell, but slowly they get the upper hand. And then flee before the back-up team of X-Men arrive.

Things were happening rather fast now, but Jubilee watched the scene below with an almost detached air, the only way she'd ever been able to react to a fight and still function, simply cut off all extraneous feelings. She saw Angelo land on Alejandra's cross and saw several cultists heading directly for him.

Reaching out, she sent a tight stream of multi-coloured plasma directly at the ground before their feet in order to slow them down and give the others a chance to reach them.

Mark was a bit more direct. Lightning cracked loudly, and he shot almost indiscriminately. Cultists were pretty easy to identify, after all. "Keep everyone away from the cross 'cept our guys," he said to Jubilee. Unnecessarily, maybe, since that seemed to be what she had in mind, too.

She didn't bother answering, only gave a small nod as she kept sending out streams of plasma towards the ground, herding cultists away from the crosses and back towards the other members of the team. She had supposed sooner or later she was going to have to get her hands dirty, but it wasn't till one of their enemies decided to simply jump over the rivets she was making in the ground that she had to act.

As it was, she froze for a second before realising that she had other ways of stopping them that didn't involve melted skin, and things she didn't want to focus on right at this minute. Changing tactics, she formed a ball of plasma between her hands and sent it hurtling at the cultist's face, exploding it just short enough to blind him but cause only minor burns.

Mark, on the other hand, didn't have any such compunctions to play nicely. The girl was still hanging on the cross. A lightning bolt struck another cultist, but this time Mark didn't pull back, and kept the current flowing. The cultist collapsed, flailing, and tried to roll around to extinguish his now-flaming robes without seizing up.

Jubilee glanced over at Mark, noting the somewhat blank look on his face before turning toward the scene below in time to catch the cultist going up in flames. Things were getting intense down there, and she realised for perhaps the first time since she'd come back that these people were not the X-men, and that things worked differently, and that the lives of the enemy were also seen entirely differently.

Another bolt, this time at someone trying to sneak up behind a vengeful Angelo. Amanda's echoed shout gave him pause, and he shook his head as if trying to clear it of cobwebs. Alejandra was their first priority, and his job was to help the others rescue her. "Bitches," he spat, and fired another bolt.

Jubilee controlled the crawling of her skin at the sound of gunfire, curls of plasma lightning brightening around her arms as she reacted to it. She was long past the point of being frozen by it however, and instead used it to focus herself, and increase the barrage on the cultists, keeping them back from Angelo while he pulled the cross down.

****

Christopher Lee had done nothing more but lay in a state of shock since he’d come back to. The things they had done – oh God, most looked so… children. They were all children. When the unknown blonde barked an order at him, he almost hid behind the altar, wanting to stay there for good. But needs must and despite his apparent cowardice he realized he could not just hide away until the end. With a gulp, Lee scrambled and slipped, trying to find his footing as he made his way to Miguel. “H-how much pressure?” he asked, gritting his teeth at the sight of blood.

"Enough to stop the bleeding! I'll make sure nothing happens to you!" Amanda waited until the professor had reached Miguel's side before taking her hands off the wound and grabbing Lee's. "Just hold down on here - don't worry about causing more damage, what's important right now is keeping the red stuff in." She'd dropped the shield to let the professor join her - now she concentrated and clapped her hands together, the shield reappearing around Miguel and Lee with her on the outside. She'd been practicing the trick for a while now, and it still gave her a headache, but it would mean she wasn't stuck inside. "Good stuff, just keep it like that. No-one should be able to get at you inside there," she called to Lee, voice a little tight with effort.

He stared at her, eyes so wide they were starting to hurt. It was one thing to see someone with mutant powers use them as a demonstration but it was quite another under this circumstances. He gave the girl -- young woman, really -- a short nod before kneeling down next to Miguel. His hands were shaking badly enough to cause shivers to run up the injured leg when he finally applied the pressure that was needed. The answering groan from Miguel coupled with the feel of the blood under his hands nearly made Lee retch. He had to bite the inside of his cheek to prevent that from happening for the time being.

Amanda nodded and turned her attention to Angelo, struggling with the cross. "Need a hand?" she said grimly, Alejandra's whimpers making something twist and turn to stone inside.

"Yeah", he said through gritted teeth. "I'm hurtin' her more. Need to take it easy, can't do that with one."

"We can't get the nails out - let's just get her flat and wait for the cavalry." Hopefully Marie or one of the other super-strong X-Men would be with them. Amanda's head was starting to ache from the effort of maintaining the shield away from herself, but she laid her hands on the upright of the cross. "You take the weight from the top? You're taller 'n me." It was surreal, almost. They could be talking about moving a piece of furniture, not a girl nailed to a cross.

***

Sarah growled at one of the remaining cultists, typically angry and just slightly-- ecstatic? It had been too long since she'd fought under these walls. Her opponent charged at her, in a desperate attempt to save what they had started. She moved then, just slightly, and swung the bone club in her hand at the back of his head as he passed. The force sent him stumbling forward, and she took him out of commission with a sharp kick to his ribs.

The zealots were thinning out, many lying either unconscious or dead on the floor. As Sarah continued to cut a swathe through them, Marie-Ange doing her part and Jubilee still shooting fireworks from above, panic and chaos reigned.

***

Mark came rushing down enveloped in a blue bubble of energy, satisfied that he and Jubilee had taken care of the immediate danger and that she could keep watch by herself. With barely a thought he made the bubble grow as two of the seemingly innumerable cultists tried to run past, knocking them to the ground. "Amanda! Holy shit." Of the things he'd seen, this was the worst. He fought to keep his stomach in. The bubble dropped, and he reached up to help lower the cross.

Between three of them, the task was quickly achieved, especially with Sarah and Marie-Ange watching their backs and Jubilee still shooting at the cultists from above. As soon as it was flat on the ground, Angelo dropped to his knees next to the cross, murmuring to Alejandra in Spanish.

She was keening softly under her breath, not really registering her surroundings, but stilled a little under Angelo's touch. There was a soft grunt from Amanda as she grabbed hold of the shielding spell, pulling it around the four of them, as well as Miguel and Lee. "Oh for one of the human tanks right now," she said to Mark, glancing down at Alejandra. It might have been a joke, but the helplessness was clear.

"This is just . . . Eugh." Mark knelt down next to the girl he didn't know and brushed a rogue strand of hair away from her face. "We have to get her off of that now."

"We can't", Angelo said quietly, holding Alejandra's hand between both of his. "None of us here's got super strength or TK or anythin' that'd work for this."

"But you have me, and I'm awesome. When you get home, tell Esteban thanks for shooting me." Mark's hand lit up as the screen on his iPod illuminated, and he quickly queued up Duran Duran. "We'll help you, hon, don't worry," he said kindly to Alejandra. "Just take a deep breath." The sounds of bloody battle were quickly replaced by the synthetic rock of the 1980s. Mark wavered as his senses shifted and made the electromagnetic spectrum palpable. He reached out an invisible hand to grasp one of the nails and pulled.

"I loathe Duran Duran, but right now I'd shag every one of them," Amanda said, grinning despite the seriousness of the situation. Her own way of coping. "Mark, you're a bleeding marvel and I take back all those bad words I said when you were screwing with my computer the other day." There was a jingle as the buckle of her leather jacket jerked and was pulled towards Mark - around them, various metal objects were stirring. "Only, don't get carried away, or you'll bury yourself in metal bits."

"'M tryin'," Mark said through gritted teeth. "'T'ain't as easy as it looks." So-called "gesture crutch" be damned, he thought, flinging his hands out over the nail to help him focus. With a cry, he wrenched out the nail, and it fell to the ground like the Sprint pin. "You OK there?" he asked Alejandra, panting. "Just one more. You'll be fine in just a little bit, yeah?" Raising his hands again, he reached out for the second nail. He tugged harder this time, and "accidentally" sent it flying into the foot of one of the downed cultists. "Cheers."

Alejandra, mercifully, had passed out somewhere during the removal of the second nail. Angelo hadn't let go of her hand, though, and his eyes were serious as he looked up at Mark. "Remind me to buy you whatever you want when we get out of here."

"Which we'd better be doing soon, unless we want to have the leather brigade barging in on our spot of violence here." Amanda glanced around - through the shield, it looked like they were finally running out of religious nutters to hit or maim. With a relieved handclap, she dropped the shield and shed her jacket and the flannel shirt underneath it, tearing the latter into strips for bandages. "Ange, I'll get Alejandra bandaged up for transport - switch places with Lee? I think our little academic over there's about to pass out." She turned to Mark. "Might want to gather the troops and take the Professor somewhere safe, yeah?"

Mark grinned weakly. "On it." Music off and perception normal, he slowly rose to his feet. "Text me when you're done."

Angelo nodded and pushed himself to his feet in turn, heading towards Miguel and Lee.