Nicobar Reef: Drink And The Devil Had Done For The Rest

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

The X-Men intercept the ship while it's still in international waters, but it turns out they're not the only interested party. Things proceed to get complicated.


One of the benefits of having a copilot on long flights was the ability to get up and stretch your legs. Scott had already done it once, but this time, he had a purpose. "Marius," he said as he approached where the younger man was sitting. "Dozed off yet?" He offered him a lopsided smile. "I tend to, when someone else has the controls on a long flight - not that it happens very often."

"What, sleep my way through my very first international mission not necessitated by the varied emergencies of my more senior teammates? Surely you jest." Marius grinned up from his chair, laying an open magazine across his chest. He'd pushed the seat back as far as would be allowed with the jacket of his leathers currently pulling double-duty as a pillow. The boy raised a hand to brush away some hair. "In fact, I find myself consummately atwitter."

"Atwitter," Scott said, a bit quizzically, sitting down beside him. "Is that bad or good?" He hadn't had the opportunity to observe Marius on the way to Australia back in the fall (obviously), and he really didn't know how the young man handled pre-mission stress.

"Neither here nor there, really," Marius replied with an airy wave. "Actually, excepting mode of transport, I find little discernible difference between this and, say, anticipation of a sport meet. There's anticipation, a healthy heightenin' of adrenaline, and, of course, respectable odds of physical injury." He smiled, lacing his fingers behind his head. "Good on me I've a degree of experience with extracurricular team-oriented violence."

It was a bit disturbing, but Scott had to admit that it was entirely possible that he was sitting beside one of the most emotionally stable of the younger X-Men/trainees. God help us all. "Not a bad attitude to have," he said, sticking to the casual tone. "I tend to get a little too tense, myself."

"Ah, a bit of tension's healthy. Gets the heart pumping." Head still cushioned, Marius swung his socked feet up on the headrest of the seat in front of him, crossed at the ankles. Situated among the more temperature-sensitive medical accoutrements in the Blackbird there was a small vial of Kyle's blood waiting for him. The need for that extra bit of security was irritating, but the younger boy had made it clear the thought of Marius incurring repairable injuries for want of a perfectly viable genetic augmentation did not impress him. Due to the fact he was rather less attached to pride than survival these days, Marius had not argued.

"So," he said, his voice not modulating in the slightest, "is it known how many can be expected? Pirates an' that?"

"At this point? No idea, apart from knowing just how many kids we're going in there looking to retrieve." Scott grimaced. "This is a little too fast and loose for my liking, but from the sounds of it, this was a pretty quiet raid into Sri Lanka. There can't be that many of them."

Marius' eyes remained fixed on the ceiling. "Right, right. Just wondered how big the average operation was. I only ever . . ." There was a hint of verbal backpedal, and then his voice levelled out again. "Well, I don't quite know the workings of it all."

"Neither do I, really. Nathan's probably a better person to ask, or someone else from Elpis, if you really wanted to know." Which Scott suspected he maybe didn't.

Marius gave a noncommittal grunt. "Perhaps. Alas, regarding such matters I far prefer brief and personal violence to circuitous diplomacy. I feel it is the privelege of feckless youth."

"Well, there should be enough of the brief personal violence today to satisfy you, I suspect," Scott said, "pessimist that I am. I've never actually boarded a pirate ship before. I can't imagine they'll take very well to it." He said it lightly, half to try and lighten the atmosphere, half to see just what Marius's reaction would be.

"An inconvenience they should have considered before electing to engage in the highly questionable occupation of piracy," was Marius' prompt reply. He always enjoyed the opportunity to quip. It gave no indication that the uncomfortable thoughts skimming the surface of his mind were once more allowed to sink into the depths.

The internal conflict was a little uncomfortable, but he decided to deal with it after they finished punching people.

--

"Five minutes out," Scott said, frowning at the console. The tension in the Blackbird had ratcheted up already - they'd done fancier insertions than this, obviously, but that didn't necessarily mean that everyone was looking forward to making their way from the plane to the ship. "You know to get the 'Bird out of projectile range once you've dropped us, right? We can't know for sure what kind of weaponry they have on that ship..."

"Once we're closer, I could tell you," Forge said matter-of-factly as he deftly maneuvered the Blackbird to a lower altitude, "but they'd probably try something rude like shooting at me. Just in case, engaging all our stealth systems might be prudent."

While the Blackbird couldn't be made completely invisible to the naked eye, the array of electronics on board could make the craft into a virtual ghost to almost any other form of detection. "Stealth is up," he announced after checking the readout on his goggles, "and we should be getting a definite visual shortly."

Something odd was going on up there. Jean had been sitting quietly in the seat behind Scott, eyes closed as she scanned ahead of them, trying to pin down what the hell it was, and after a few moments she opened her eyes again and said, "There's two ships... At least two, at any rate. Too many different thoughts in different languages to just be one, and some serious antagonism. I think... they're fighting with each other..."

"Son of a-" Scott bit back on the remainder of the completely involuntary profanity. They had a limited amount of time to react here, and there wasn't time for venting. "Can you give me any estimate on numbers?"

"I'm feeling fifteen in direct opposition to each other. Not counting the kids. It's possible there are more sailors not involved in beating the crap out of each other; I don't speak enough of the languages to be sure I'm not missing someone who's not a hostage."

"Wait wait wait," Forge stammered, pushing his goggles up onto his forehead to glance over at Jean. "Are you saying that instead of just dropping you guys onto a ship from a moving aircraft, I have to drop you guys onto a ship in the middle of a naval engagement, possibly with boarding parties and cutlasses and pirates and..." His face split in a grin as he practically vibrated in his seat, turning his attention back to the controls. "Oh, this just gets cooler by the second."

Jean snorted. "You're an odd, odd guy. And I doubt there will be cutlasses. Or, at least, I hope not." Fixing her gaze back on Scott she cocked her head. "What's the call? As far as getting us down in one piece, it's not a significantly different problem for me."

Jean was more than capable of controlling the descent of multiple people and shielding them. Marie and Kurt could get themselves down, and weren't easy targets, either of them. Scott tried not to grind his teeth as he thought it through; it was a bad habit.

Really, there was only one conclusion. This line of work wasn't about opting out of risky situations. "Let's go," he said, loudly enough for everyone in the plane to hear him. "Everyone in ready positions at the ramp - we're going in hot, so be ready to fight as soon as your feet hit the deck." Or possibly even on the way down.

Forge dropped altitude smoothly, low enough to where the maneuvering thrusters cut a wake through the mostly-calm sea. Lowering his goggles once more, he concentrated on the wireframe outline of the two boats as various threat data scrolled through the edge of his field of vision.

"Drop zone is definitely hot!" he shouted as he reduced speed slightly and switched the ramp control to manual. "Please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle until this ride has reached-"

A series of pings alerted Forge to one of the ships activating a sea-to-air missile pod, and he swore under his breath, dropping the Blackbird lower to almost skim the waves. "-hell with it!" he continued. "When you see daylight, go go go!"

--

The landing was rough, and Jennie hoped no one noticed the fact that she landed on her ass. But seriously? Rocking boat. Wet deck. RAIN. She was happy to have not taken a header over the railing, thankyouverymuch. She climbed to her feet quickly and pushed her wet bangs out of her eyes. Their targets were just up ahead and locked in combat.

"Siryn, can we hit them?" she turned to her teammate.

Terry didn't bother to reply out loud, just giving Jennie a short nod. With the wind and the rain it was unlikely that the younger girl would hear her anyway and she wasn't going to waste power targeting just Jennie's ears. Hand gestures worked well enough as she drew in a deep breath and, in spite of the seriousness, grinned maniacally.

Jennie cracked her knuckles and considered a warning shot. Then she decided that they didn't have to be subtle. With a flick of her wrist, a red disk sent the two combatants sprawling on the slippery deck.

A wave of sonic energy followed, dissonant and devastating to the senses, staggering many still standing--friend and foe alike. Terry ran for the battle in its wake, knowing Jennie would be beside her.

Jennie matched the older girl's stride, going for the combatant on the left. Another flash of red, and the man trying to get clumsily to his feet slipped again, this time cracking his head on the guardrail. Not hard enough to do serious damage, but enough to send him into unconsciousness.

--

"Come on, you," Jean said, ducking behind a pile of boxes on the deck and pulling Marius out of the line of sight of most of the fighting. "Into the hold for us - we need to find those kids."

Marius cast a disparaging look at the rabble. "No argument there, this lot're piss at fightin'. The quality of pirate is obviously in sore decline." He scraped the damp hair from his eyes, claws snagging it. Attempting to ascertain a possible direction by sniffing the air was no help, however; the wind whipped away any useful scents, and keeping one's balance on a pitching deck was requiring far more concentration than movies would have lead him to believe. He turned back to Jean for direction.

Jean eyed him briefly, although whether it was because of the language or not would have been hard to tell, and all she said was, "How are you set for powers? Let me know if you need a boost..."

Off to the side there was a retort of gunfire followed by a flash of red light. Without betting an eye at the accompanying scream Marius replied, "More might be better."

The boy stepped back a few paces and braced his arms against a wall. "Right. Go me a good one, if you please."

There was something not all together intuitive about intentionally giving a teammate a fairly substantial TK body blow, but this was Marius, and really, there was not much about him or his powers which could be said to be intuitive. "Coming atcha..." she muttered...

Marius grunted in the confused moment when his body failed to respond to the telekinesis in quite the same way as the clothes covering it, but the immersive contact did the trick. It was always a bit difficult to tell just how much he'd absorbed, but it was reassuring to know he had something in reserve.

"Cheers," he said, pushing himself away from the wall. "Right, where were we?"

"Now we... oh." All of a sudden Jean's attention shifted as one of the mental patterns flowing around her suddenly flickered to the forefront of her focus. "Whoops." Jean's TK shield flashed into existence almost the same second that the retort for the gun sounded.

Marius' head whipped towards the gunfire. "Some people have no manners at all," he remarked as his senior teammate quickly, and quite literally, disarmed their attackers without lifting a finger. Turning to face them, he gave his knuckles an ominous crack. Despite all expectation and his now-dwindling hopes for humanity, the mutant signatures on the pirates' ship so far did not belong to captives. The revelation did not please him.

"Ah, well." The boy's lips curved in a humourless smile, revealing sharp teeth. "Upon finding oneself in Rome . . ."

--

Marie barrel rolled to the right, avoiding an energy blast that hadn't even been directed at her. With the ship's movements, nobody was doing great precision work. "Nightcrawler, above you," she called out to her teammate as a barrel chucked by someone else seemed to be heading directly at his back. In the same instant, she swung around to punch a man aiming a gun at someone else, grabbing the weapon and throwing it as far as she could to splash into the ocean.

Kurt didn't even look before dropping and side rolling out of the barrel's path, then kicking it over the side. "Thank you, Rogue. To your left!" just as someone threw himself - or perhaps was thrown by the ship's movement, it was hard to tell - at her.

And the reason didn't matter. Marie simply flew up and the person looked surprised as they hit a mast instead of her. "Ah feel like Ah'm in a movie," Marie muttered. "Where are the wenches with their pitchers of grog? And the monkey?"

"There were never wenches on the ships at sea", Kurt said absently, punching a red-furred man in the face as he lunged at him. "As for the monkey, be careful what you wish for."

Kurt had not, as a matter of fact, made that particular remark out of the blue. Because there was a monkey - a very small, very wet, very upset monkey clinging to the mast just above where Marie was hovering. It gave an almighty shriek and then leapt onto her shoulder, clinging to her for dear life.

Marie just stared, shocked, at the sad, drenched monkey on her shoulder. She didn't even have time to let shock properly set in before one of the combatants took advantage of her distraction and swung a plank of wood at her head. Rogue gave him a rather annoyed look as it bounced off her and kicked her foot into his jaw. "Shoo," she said to the monkey that seemed to have melded with her leathers, waving her fingers at it.

The monkey had actually shrieked at her attacker, but at Rogue's attempt to wave it away, just chittered piteously and held on harder. Large dark eyes stared imploringly at her.

"Shoo," Marie tried again. Nothing. She did not have time for this. "Fine," she exclaimed. "Just...don't get in the way." As if the monkey could understand her. Turning back to the fray, Marie did her best to ignore the furry lump on her shoulder.

--

There was really only one thing worse than mutants being kidnapped to be sold like pets with useful tricks, and that was mutants being sold by other mutants. Scott had been struggling with a steadily building anger almost as soon as he'd waded into the fight. There was a thin line between purposeful wrath and the sort of anger that messed with your focus. So far he was managing to stay on the right side of it.

He was also staying away from the hand-to-hand combat that most of the people around him were engaged in, taking advantage of his ability to strike from a distance rather than sacrificing that by getting caught up in the melee. 'Playing sniper', Ororo had called it approvingly after a recent Danger Room session. He did more good this way. And if he wasn't restraining his optic blasts quite as much as he might have, he doubted anyone was going to weep for smugglers suffering from more broken bones than they might have if he'd played nicely.

Unfortunately, Scott wasn't the only one aboard with a ranged ability, and at least one of the others didn't have anywhere near his precision. One of the combatants flung a ball of blue plasma at his opponent, missing by a mile as the ship rocked under the impact of a particularly powerful wave. The additional, dramatic tilting of the ship's deck in the instant after the plasma hit it was probably a very, very bad thing, Scott reflected, making a wild grab for the railing at the side of the ship to steady himself. Overboard would be bad, he thought, looking down at the churning water below for a moment. Overboard would be very - oh SHIT!

The water was churning, and not in a natural way. At a glance, he saw what had happened; the plasma blast had smashed through the deck at an angle, and put a matching hole in the hull of the ship itself. "Phoenix!" he snapped over his calm, spotting Jean and Marius through the fighting. "Large and awkward hole in the hull!"

Jean had staggered, lurching into something which, her shoulder informed her, was really quite hard and unyielding. But she kept her feet and had been about to gesture Marius to follow her when Scott's call came. "On it," she called - because holes in ships were BAD. "If you can," she said to Marius, "get to the kids. If they're guarded or anything unexpected comes up, wait for backup." She barely waited for his nod before lifting herself off the still disturbingly tilted deck and heading towards the problem.

And what a problem it was. Standing in midair a few feet above and away from the churning mass of water (and quite firmly not thinking about it) Jean's first thought was, Well, shit. Inserting a TK shield to stop the water rushing in was by no means easy, but was at least doable. Patching the hole, though... "Anybody got any large bits of scrap metal near them?" she called over the com.

Scott was looking around for just that - the link, as always, was a heartbeat ahead of anything Jean actually said aloud - when something that was unmistakably a bullet pinged off the railing just to his left. He lunged for cover as more gunfire came at him, finding it behind a stack of crates that were thankfully well-secured.

Jean, spot for me, where's the bastard firing from?

Whee, multi-tasking. Jean took a breath and a moment to curse fate and Nate for leaving her the only viable psi for missions. Then, leaving the brunt of the power of her mind to do the fairly straightfoward task of keeping the ocean outside the ship, she diverted her actual focus into the assorted frays onboard. Um... Left of the cabin door. Using those boxes for cover. That had definitely been a mental image of her husband in the foreign mind.

Scott darted out from behind the crates, the angles already fixed in his mind as he fired a quick optic blast in that direction. It caught the gunman squarely in the chest as he leaned out to fire again, and flung him backwards and out of sight. Scott turned, half-looking for another target, half-seeking the scrap metal Jean needed - but then someone was rushing him from his blind side, the ping from his prosthesis an instant too late. He landed hard on the deck, the pirate on top of him - and found himself sliding.

As soon as Scott had the information Jean's focus had moved - already the call had come that someone had something which might do. She'd snagged the location and size from her teammate's mind and was already trying to manuver the large, awkward piece to her without crushing anyone. Or, at least, no one on their side.

This was not going well. Scott managed to free himself, rolling back to his feet. The pirate - great, now he was actually thinking of them as pirates, when had that happened? - managed to do the same, with the agility of a man well-used to keeping his footing at sea. He lunged at Scott, and Scott gritted his teeth and blasted him - or tried to. The ship rolled sideways as another powerful wave hit it. It ruined Scott's aim, and the blast hit the crates he'd shielded behind a moment ago. Funnily enough, they did topple towards his attacker, knocking the man down.

Unfortunately, the motion of the ship had already sent Scott overboard.

Jean's focus was basically entirely taken up, what with the pressure of the ocean and the finesse of freeing most of a ton of scrap metal, but there were a few things that would always, always be able to break through her concentration. One of them was the feeling of being submerged. She was still floating above the ocean, and that left one other option. "SCOTT!" she screamed, but even as she reached for him she felt her grip on the metal slipping. Keeping a dozen pens in the air flying through patterns was one thing, but the mass of the metal and the pressure of the ocean really didn't allow her to split her attention this much, and if she dropped the metal it would crush someone.

On the other ship, an older man locked in hand-to-hand combat with a snarling, clearly feral mutant hesitated, and nearly had his throat ripped out for his pains. He recovered an instant later, freeing himself enough to grab his gun, lying on the deck of the ship where his opponent had knocked it away. He caught the mutant in the shoulder with one shot, but didn't move to finish him off. Instead, he ran to the side of the ship, dark eyes searching the turbulent water until he spotted Scott struggling to swim in full body armor.

For a moment, he stared, despite the fighting still going on all around him. Then, moving purposefully, he grabbed a rope and threw it to Scott. "Grab it!" he bellowed over the noise all around him.

Oh, thank God, someone else had seen, had noticed. Jean's heart pounded too loudly in her ears and the world seemed to hold still, and then he had the rope in his hands and his head was above water and she could breathe again. Her grip on the metal firmed as her focus shifted back to the problem of how to patch the hole.

Scott coughed up what seemed like half the Indian Ocean as his rescuer hauled him aboard, shouting at him. It took a moment or six for Scott's head to clear enough to realize what the shouting entailed. "-are you trying to do?" the man was bellowing at him from entirely too close. "Are you listening to me? What are your people trying to do?" There was no hostility in the brown eyes boring into him, or in the older man's voice, despite the volume. Just urgency.

Scott coughed up some more water, then found his voice. "We're trying to get those kids out!" he shouted back hoarsely.

The other man's eyes widened, then narrowed, his expression twisting in something close to chagrin as he rose, turning away. "BADRI! ZEE!" A tall Indian man with an eyepatch and an obviously mutant woman with a cat-based feral mutation looked up from their respective opponents at his bellow. "Focus on Chang's men! Help the others get the kids out!"

Scott looked up, saw and heard the orders being relayed, presumably to other members of the one ship's crew. Oh, thank fuck- The older man extended a hand and Scott took it, finding himself hauled back to his feet as easily as he'd been hauled out of the water.

"Sorry about that!" The older man was giving him a strange, quizzical smile, and the look in his eyes was far too intent. "Let's get to it, then!"

--

Jean's efforts above were keeping any more water from coming in through the very large hole in the hull, but there was already too much water down in the main cargo hold, and the ship was quite obviously not stable in the water. The kids were in cages, making it quite clear that the ship had been retrofitted to serve precisely this trade, and most were too exhausted or shocky to do anything more than weep quietly.

"Oh my god..." Marie said, stopping as she walked into the hold and just staring at the cages. "Ah'll bust 'em out, you 'port 'em out Nightcrawler," she said, making her way over to the cage and trying to look non-threatening as the kids noticed the two new people in the hold. "Hey, we're gonna get you out of here," she said in a soothing tone, reaching over to break off the padlock on the nearest cage.

The girl inside the cage had been huddled in the corner, face hidden. She looked up sharply at the noise, eyes wide and pupils enormous, suggesting that she'd been drugged at some point during this voyage. She yelled something in a language neither Marie nor Kurt knew, and her shackled hands jerked towards Marie. There was a burst of blue energy, which due to the fact that her hands were shackled, caught Marie in the shoulder rather than directly in the face.

Marie glanced down at the spot where the energy bolt had hit her. Forge would be pleased that his new polymer had held up fairly well to the blast, but she didn't want to take any chances with Kurt's safety. "On second thought, maybe you should stay back until we calm 'em down a bit." Holding her hands palms up at first, she made a low soothing noise before trying to use her hands to explain what she was saying. "We're gonna get y'all out of here," she said, pointing to the cages with the children, then up out of the ship.

There was a boy pressing himself against the bars of the next cage over. "Want out," he said in broken, but understandable English. "Want to go to the... house. Isabel said, safe!"

Kurt moved over to him with a wary eye on the girl, putting a hand through the bars to squeeze his shoulder reassuringly. "We will get you out, and take you to somewhere safe. I promise."

There was a shout from behind them - one of the pirates, coming stumbling down the tilting stairs and into the cargo hold. He raised a gun, but before either of the X-Men could react, a extremely large, reptilian-looking shape appeared behind him, raising one enormous fist and bringing it crashing down on the back of the smaller man's head.

"I do not think there should be shooting around the children," the reptilian mutant said in a booming, heavily accented voice as the pirate crumpled.

"No shooting around the children sounds great to me," Marie said, staying where she had shifted in front of the cage when she had seen the gun. One child had clutched onto the back of her leg through the bars and Marie rested her gloved hand on top of the girl's head reassuringly.

Kurt was still standing with his hand on the boy's shoulder, now moved to shield him. He looked up at the reptilian mutant. "You care about the children's safety? Then help us."

"This is why we were here," the other mutant said, going over to one of the cage doors and pulling it easily off its hinges. "The captain, he did not realize you were here to do the same. When people drop out of the sky into the middle of a fight..."

"Yeah, well, we weren't exactly expecting you either," Marie said. After a moment of hesitation, she turned to break the padlock off the cage and swing the door open. If the reptilian mutant was lying, he couldn't do much damage to her anyways and the children were terrified and needed out. "You got a name?" she called out over her shoulder.

"Chod," was the reply, before he said something reassuring in Tamil to the boy in the cage he'd just opened. The boy stumbled over as far as he could, given the shackles, and Chod snapped them delicately before lifting him out.

Kurt couldn't do much to help in the way the other two could, but he could clear their way to do it and guard the released ones. He called a quick "Children, over here" to the boy and two girls who had already been freed, moving to a safe corner.

There was an ominous rumbling noise from the hull beneath them, somewhat muffled by the water but not at all encouraging-sounding. Chod gave a distressed rumble. "We should hurry," he said, moving on to the next cage. "This ship is bound for the bottom."

"Then let's stop chatting and get to work," Marie said, still feeling slightly uneasy about trusting the unknown mutant. Then again, she had a monkey clinging to her back quite literally, so why not trust the pirate?

--

The rear cargo compartment was knee-deep in water, but despite Jean's patch job, there were ominous-sounding noises coming from beneath the floor. Suspicious gurgling, and the ship was listing definitely to one side. There were only three cages back here, all of them occupied, and one of the young mutants was lying unconscious in the water, thankfully not face-down but bleeding from a cut along his hairline. One of the crewmen of the ship had made his way through the fighting and down to check on the cargo; giving the unconscious youngster a dismissive look, he moved on to the next cage.

"Rigorous cataloguing schedule, eh?" came a deceptively light voice from behind him. A young man crouched at the foot of the ladder, brackish water lapping at his bare feet.

Marius' nose wrinkled at the stench. It was the smell of sweat, fear, and the consequences of being held too long in a place that gave no regard to sanitation. It brought back memories. Bad ones.

The crewman turned towards the voice, and it became obviously that he was, in fact, quite large. He stared at Marius flatly for a moment, then growled something unintelligible and started to lumber through the water towards him. His intentions were quite obvious.

Marius rose into a defensive crouch, muscles tense. A quick glance had told him the man was a mutant, and one with enhanced physical attributes -- strength, he was almost certain, likely including some sort of adaptive physiology to keep it from ripping his body apart. And, while he wasn't detecting any corresponding increase in speed, the man's abrupt charge made it apparent that his natural gifts were more than enough.

The trainee dodged the first blow by ducking low and trying for a leg-sweep, but with the awkward angle and the water's drag he only staggered the man. Marius spun to his feet and sloshed back against a wall, irritated; strategy called for deflection and evasion, both of which happened to be exactly the opposite of his natural inclinations.

Ah, sod it.

Reaching back to feel the wall, Marius shook his head at his opponent. "I was hopin' to save this," the Australian commented, bunching his legs, "but what can I say? You're worth it."

Truth be told, Marius wasn't even sure the man spoke English, but he responded in the universal language of Large Angry Individual Charging. Grinning, Marius jumped, twisting to shove both feet against the wall. His thigh muscles propelled him forward. So did the stored burst of telekinesis he'd saved from Jean.

He hit the pirate dead-center in the chest, and the telekinesis added to the impact was enough to send the two of them backwards and into the water, the super-strong mutant making a particularly impressive splash. Coughing and spitting, the pirate came back to his feet, staggering around in a circle and bellowing something murderous-sounding.

Marius, just a little dazed from the impact, lurched to his feet and shoved the dripping hair from his face. He started turning to follow the guard, hands raised defensively.

"Right, let's have at it then," he said, displaying his borrowed claws. Contemplating the man's bulk, he wondered how much strength he might be able to absorb before the internal bleeding set in.

The man lunged towards him again, his course taking him past the ladder. In that split-second, a lean, white-furred body shot downwards - and around the ladder like an acrobat swinging on the high bar. Booted feet slammed into the man's head, hard enough and fast enough to knock him forward into the water. Where he did not, this time, get right back up.

The new arrival landed far more lightly, wrinkling her nose at the splash. Slit-pupiled eyes regarded Marius curiously, then moved downwards to his claws. "Make yourself useful," the feline mutant said, and started over to one of the cages. "We need to get them out of here before we all drown."

Marius blinked down at the fallen guard, then back to the newcomer. Young, American accent, feral with blatant feline characteristics and appearing as if from nowhere. Well, he'd just been fighting pirates. Why not?

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, I'm sure," he remarked, although the abruptness of her entry wasn't disorienting enough that he couldn't acknowledge the very excellent suggestion that they free the captives. He started over to the nearest cage, then paused as he watched her prying at the locked door. "If I might inquire, your darin' rescue didn't happen to come with keys, did it?"

She hissed - not at him, but at the lock. "Check the chin hooi on the floor for keys. Lock're rusty. Take too long to pick."

"Right, but I expect ample compensation at some later point in time. I have rigid standards for the laying of hands upon others, an' this one lacks several requirements. To whit, appropriate gender and passing familiarity with personal hygiene."

A hurried inspection revealed the guard carried nothing even resembling keys. Marius growled low in his throat. Fun was fun, but the water was becoming a significant problem. "Not a thing," he reported to the woman.

"Guess I risk the ricochet, then," she said, drawing a gun and angling it as carefully as she could as she took aim at the lock. "Water might help, but I'd stand back, if I were you-"

"Ah, wait -- a third option is before us." Marius looked around. None of the three captives had particularly relevant powers. The guard, on the other hand . . .

Kneeling in the rising water, Marius picked up the man's arm and dragged his claws across it until the blood welled. Dropping the arm on his knees, Marius similarly gouged his free palm and pressed the wound against the man's arm before the healing factor could close it.

"Cheers for your donation, and may you contract a flesh-eating disease," Marius said, unceremoniously dropping the man's arm back into the filthy water. He stood. A warm burn was starting in his muscles, the power already metabolizing.

"O... kay," she said, the hint of a Southern Californian accent creeping through. But she backed away, saying something that sounded reassuring to the children in a language that the two who were conscious clearly recognized. They both backed away from the doors, gazing at Marius with a mixture of wariness and hope as he made his way through the water towards them.

Marius grabbed two bars and unceremoniously yanked the door from its hinges. By the time the stunned captive had closed his mouth the Australian was snapping the shackle chain. "Off with you, then," he told the boy, gesturing towards the missing side of the cage.

When he freed the unconscious boy in the middle cage, his companion darted in, lifting the younger mutant over her shoulder. "Get the other and follow me up," she said. "There's still fighting up there. We're not getting them out just to have them get shot accidentally."

"No worries," Marius replied, tearing the last door from its cage with a shriek of metal before throwing it against the opposite wall with undue force. Filth and stupidity and mutants enslaving their own. He really was quite done with this place.

Whilst it would have been unsporting to further assault an unconscious man, on the way out Marius made sure he trod on the guard.

--

"Forge to Cyclops," the call came over the communicator, clear despite the chaos and distance. "If you guys aren't too busy ruining the buoyancy of those big tin tubs, I've got eyes on some of your hostiles bugging out at a high rate of speed. Single-hull speedboat, I'd guess, heading north by northeast."

Scott punched a wiry, apparently baseline human (at least, he wasn't showing any signs of obvious mutant powers) in the face. The man fell over, clutching at an obviously broken nose, and Scott took a step back, looking upwards at the circling Blackbird.

"I don't want them getting away," he said, and it came out as more of a snarl than he'd intended. Most of the kids were safely out of the hold of the rapidly sinking ship, with two still being rescued, according to what he was hearing over the coms. "We're mopping up here. I can send you up some help so that you can go after them."

"Making pickup approach run now, then," Forge replied. The Blackbird, barely visible from the height at which it was circling, began a rapid spiraling descent towards the two ships. "I've got the escape boat's likely exit vector plotted, they won't get far with the speed advantage we have, ETA in about forty-five seconds."

--

The pirates on the speedboat hadn't responded very well to any suggestions that they should heave to and allow themselves to be boarded by the occupants of the large black jet. One of the men, wearing what looked like a battered captain's hand, was screaming into the radio even as he gestured obscenely at the Blackbird. His English was broken, at best. But for all his semi-coherent comments about fornicating with monkeys, the fact that two of his men were shooting very determinedly at the jet made the situation very clear.

Forge laughed over the radio, keeping a steady position behind the speedboat and slowly gaining on the vessel. "That's right, do keep shooting," he taunted as millimeter-wave radar displays flashed across his goggles, indicating the lines of fire were nowhere near the Blackbird. "Knockoff imitations of an already-crappy Kalashnikov, unstable seas, a moving target and a moving platform, let's face it, dudes. Even I couldn't hit me under those conditions."

In the back of his mind, Forge knew that the Blackbird's hull was resistant to nearly any small-arms fire, but there was always that chance for a lucky shot - lucky shot?

Toggling the onboard intercom, he smiled as he keyed the mic. "Roulette," he said, chuckling slightly using Jennie's codename for the first time, "what're the odds of that fine vessel down there having some unexplained nautical difficulties?"

He was answered by a semi-unprofessional swat upside the head. "Right behind you, dorkface," Jennie said. She squinted out the windshield, since her precognition didn't quite translate over video feeds. She grinned. "Get me closer and we'll find out just what happens when you don't take better care of your equipment."

Forge nodded, increasing speed slightly and beginning to lower the Blackbird's rear hatch. "Flyby in twenty seconds. Someone hold on to her?"

Terry was already there, with a hook for Jennie's belt. She tapped on her shoulder, "Come along then, time to buzz the tower."

"When you are finished, Roulette", Kurt said before the girls left, "you and I will go down to take them on directly. Siryn, perhaps we could have a little backup from your powers?"

Jennie nodded and then turned to her teammate, holding up the thin wire and then raising a dark eyebrow. "You're gonna catch me if I fall, right?"

Terry grinned, "Oh, sure. It'd look bad on my mission report if I let one of my teammates plummet to her nasty injury or death. That'd mean extra Danger Room time for certain." She double and triple checked the restraint as she spoke, quickly but competently. "Any time you're ready, Roulette."

The girl saluted. "All set. Let's do something ill-advised and slightly stupid!" Jennie grinned. The bay doors opened in the blackbird, letting a gust of windy, wet air into the cabin. Jennie flinched and shielded her eyes, squinting as she did so.

"Little closer, Forge!" she yelled. "Slightly to your left!"

Forge gave a quick whoop of acknowledgment, delicately adjusting the thrusters to slide the aircraft left without bouncing it off the jetwash coming up from the water's surface. "In position, bombs away!" he hollered, all attention on the controls.

Jennie gripped the edge of the cabin, and for one gut churning moment she thought she might fall, but the wire clipped to her belt held fast. She raised a fist as they closed in over the fleeing boat, and the light from the disk in her fist made her squint, before she tossed it. It seemingly disappeared under the waves, but a loud shuddering boom sounded secods later. A plume of white smoke began to trail out of the now disabled ship as the blackbird soared overhead.

Job done, and now it was his turn. Kurt reached for Jennie's shoulder, and the next moment they'd vanished, reappearing on the deck of the ship. He let go immediately, launching a spin-kick to the nearest unfortunate sailor's face.

There was no time to react to the stench of Kurt's teleport, Jennie wrinkled her nose and squinted once the smoke cleared. Her eyes widened comedically a fewe seconds later, and her fist connected with her attacker's nose. A flash of red in her vision made her duck, and a red disk made that second attacker go sprawling over a previously unknown untied bootlace.

Over the communicators, Terry was careful to broadcast a white noise that would protect her team from the results of her next act. Then she drew in a breath and began to sing, dizzying and seductive, designed to drive those who heard it mad. She could have done it without the melody, just used raw power to force the confusion through, but her control wasn't as good and it would have risked the team.

Forge smiled, Terry's singing barely audible through the communicator static. Thinking quickly, he cut the engines to their 'silent' setting, hovering above the waves as he patched in Siryn's communicator to the external speakers on the Blackbird.

--

It had taken longer than it should have to wrap things up. The remaining crew of the sunken ship hadn't wanted to lay down arms like civilized people, and it had been damned awkward, having to get the kids through the mess of it and to safety on the remaining ship. But avoiding getting caught in the crossfire was still preferable to drowning.

And the sun was coming out. Scott looked up at the fractured clouds and took what felt like his first deep breath in close to an hour. He loosened the collar of his jacket and turned his attention back to his surroundings here on the ship, his mind already working on drawing up a plan for what happened now. Jean had the kids inside, checking them over

That planning came to a sudden, stuttering stop as he saw the captain walking towards the prisoners sitting on the deck with their hands bound behind their back. Walking towards the prisoners and drawing a gun.

"Hey," he called sharply, "what the hell do you think you're doing?" The captain didn't even look at him. "Hey!"

Kurt was quicker to respond, teleporting to stand between the captain and the prisoners. "Stop. This is not a fight."

The captain gave him a narrow-eyed look, but his tone was almost patient as he replied. "No, it's not. But they buy and sell human beings, so I'm not sure what your objection is to the idea of shooting them in the head and throwing them overboard." He looked past Kurt at the seated men, a few of whom were looking visibly terrified at this point. But there was no place to go except overboard.

Scott had reached them at this point. "Just because we're in international waters doesn't make any of us judge, jury, and executioner," he snapped, glad they'd left the prisoners from the speedboat on the Blackbird rather than bringing them down here. "Put the gun away."

"We will have them punished properly for what they have done", Kurt said calmly, not moving. "But I will not stand by and watch you simply execute them."

The captain looked skeptical and more than slightly irritated. "You do realize where you are," he said, to both Kurt and Scott. "Where you are, what passes for a justice system either where this ship came from or where it's headed... and what do you think classes as proper punishment?" There was something particularly flinty in his eyes as he went on. "Prison's an outside possibility at best. And years in the worst prison this part of the world has to offer still wouldn't be enough for what they nearly sold these kids into - what they've probably sold God knows how many other people into."

"You're probably right," Scott said, meeting his eyes unflinchingly, "but let me be plain - I don't care. We tracked this ship down to stop it and bring those kids back to Sri Lanka. They're ex-soldiers, and they've got people waiting to help them re-integrate into society. As for them-" He gestured at the pirates, half-dismissively, "-we just sank what they used to trade in human beings."

The captain was giving him a look that quite unmistakably said I can't believe how naive you're being. "There are other ships."

"Yes, there are. And there are also laws, however many people do a half-assed job of upholding them."

"You are right", Kurt said almost apologetically. "True justice would require them being sold into the same situation. But I am afraid we cannot allow that, either."

The captain looked skyward briefly, then tucked his gun back into its holster. "Look, I'm not going to pretend that we can beat your people in a fight," he said, his eyes narrowing as he studied the two of them. "But I'm not happy with this. And if you want the rest of our association to go smoothly, you'll make a concession in turn."

Scott's jaw tightened. "I'm listening."

"We go back to Madripoor first. You can take the kids back to Sri Lanka from there, but I want a chance to talk to them in a calmer setting. To find out what they can tell me about how these bastard traffickers operated. That ship you're so proud of sinking is one ship," the captain said, anger creeping into his voice. "One part of a much larger network I've been trying to crack for years."

Scott gave him a long, more than slightly sardonic look. "You were going to shoot those bastard traffickers and throw them overboard, weren't you?" The captain bristled, but Scott persisted. "Wouldn't they be a better source of information?"

"They won't talk," the captain said flatly. "They know their boss will do worse to them than anything I could do, if they do."

"I think we can agree to your condition," Kurt said in an attempt at conciliation, throwing a glance at Scott. "It is only a little out of our way, after all."

"Our plane's quite a bit faster than your ship," Scott pointed out, not liking this idea at all.

"Easy solution - I'll send someone to Madripoor with you on your plane, to arrange for a safe landing spot. You can take your prisoners with you, too. But the kids stay on the ship until we get there."

It came down to whether or not he was willing to risk another fight, Scott realized, gritting his teeth. But he really, really didn't like the idea of splitting his forces. Then again, if he kept Marie and Jean here with him... "Fine," he said curtly. "But only one member of your crew gets on my plane." Jean, I need you and your truth-detecting trick, he sent down the link.

The captain gave him a strange smile, the look in his eyes oddly assessing. "I'm going to be the bigger man here and not insist on the same in return."

Kurt took a step towards Scott. "I would like to stay on the ship, Cyclops. The children..."

Scott gave a quick, sharp shake of his head. "I need you on the 'Bird," he said, taking Kurt's arm and drawing him away from where the captain stood waiting. He kept a close eye on the other man, however, just in case the gun came back out. "Look, I can handle things here with Marie and Jean," he said under his breath. "Take the others, and whoever he designates as a guide, and make sure there aren't any surprises waiting for us in Madripoor. I'm not sure I buy his reasoning for going back there."

"We need a telepath, to be truly sure of that", Kurt argued in an equally low tone. "Let me stay and Jean go in my place. She can fly as well as I can."

For fuck's sake, was the world determined to piss him off today? Scott tried not to grind his teeth, aware of the captain watching them speculatively. "That's an order," he said. Now, stop arguing with me before I throw you overboard. "Forge can pilot. Take Roulette and Siryn with you."

Kurt looked at him for a long moment, then simply turned and walked away, back unusually stiff - though at least he was restraining his tail from lashing - to find his assigned team.

Scott looked up at the circling Blackbird. "Forge, stand by for a pick-up," he transmitted, and then turned to see the captain watching him. Still. The look in the older man's eyes was uncomfortably intent, and Scott didn't quite manage not to glare before he turned back to the captured slavers. "Get up," he said brusquely, gesturing just in case they weren't English-speakers. Just because he didn't want them dumped overboard didn't meant he was going to be particularly solicitous.