xp_logs | Keep The Faith: Survival and Sacrifice

The battle continues

The window of the convenience store exploded inwards as Senyaka cannonballed through it, glowing whips thrashing about as he landed. Fixing his gaze on Kyle from behind his mask, he pointed at the feral. "Now," he intoned, "I'll have that scream you owe me."

Kyle had enough time to roll his eyes before diving behind an empty set of shelves to avoid the psionic whips. He did not want to get hit with -those- again. "Not gonna happen!" He called, getting back on his feet, but staying crouched low. There wasn't much of anything close at hand to throw, and with only the shelves between him and Senyaka, he didn't think his cover would last for long.

Senyaka leaped into the air, swatting at Jan absently as she flew by, then turning his attention to Kyle as he landed atop a shelf, kicking dust-covered rolls of toilet paper and bottles of window cleaner to the side. With a flick of his wrist, he shot one of the whips forward, snaring Kyle's ankle. With the leverage provided by altitude, the masked mutant swung, flinging Kyle through one of the few still-standing windows in the storefront, then yanking him back inside through the broken glass.

With his arms up in front of his face to protect his eyes from the glass, Kyle couldn't see anything. He felt shards dig into his forearms, and ignored it. He could deal with that later. He'd survive. And it was a small thing to ignore the pain from the cuts while he was ignoring the pain from the whips. He pushed himself up onto his knees, and looked up at Senyaka, blood smeared on his face and lips curled back in a snarl. "I am so fucking SICK of you." he growled, barely understandably, and leapt at the other man.

Retracting the whips, Senyaka leaped into the air again, doing a full split to let Kyle pass under him. Kicking over the row of shelves as he landed, he snapped the whips forward again, this time encircling both of Kyle's wrists. "The wounded animal is the most dangerous, they say. Perhaps it is time to put you out of your misery, yes?"

"Kiss my ass." Kyle spat blood out of his mouth and stood slowly. The pain in his arms from the glass was nothing compared to the pain from the effect of the whips and he didn't care. ~Good. Pain isn't important. Protect your friends.~ He couldn't ignore the voice, even if he couldn't see the speaker anymore.

He took a challenging step forward, fangs bared and let out a snarl, and then twisted his arms to grab the psionic whips that circled his wrists and pulled, yanking Senyaka towards him.

Pulled off-balance, Senyaka turned the stumble into a leap at Kyle, swinging his knee up towards the taller mutant's solar plexus. However, even wounded, Kyle's reflexes were still finely-tuned by training and instinct, and the shot was blocked with the collision of shin on shin. Linked by the pain-inducing psionic tendrils, Senyaka and Kyle circled each other, trading and blocking quick, vicious knees and low kicks, each unable to score a definite strike on the other.

The knee strikes and kicks were tiring Kyle out, but they served a purpose. They kept Senyaka busy, and kept him from noticing that Kyle had maneuvered them closer to the front of the store. As they came closer to the front counter, Kyle paused, almost unnoticeably before blocking Senyaka's knee. The brief delay meant that instead of glancing off Kyle's shin, it collided with his knee.

But Kyle was expecting that, and so while it sent a jolt of pain through his kneecap, he didn't fall back or seize up. Senyaka did -direct knee on knee contact was jarring. And that gave Kyle the chance to jump up onto the counter.

Senyaka tried to turn, but found his own whips crossing in front of his throat, Kyle's knee tight against the back of his neck. The feedback from the pain was intense, but the sadist only smiled under his mask. "You... know how it... feels..." he choked out, trying to grip his fingers around the energy tendril tightening around his throat. "You understand... in killing me, you become me..."

Kyle remained impassive, ignoring Senyaka as he struggled against the hold, and tried to fill his lungs. With every rise of his opponent's chest, he only drove his knee in deeper, tightening the whips wrapped around the man's throat. ~You know what you need to do.~ The voice said. "I know what I am." Kyle said quietly, as Senyaka went limp. He waited, watching the veins in the other mutant's throat pulse, and the slight rise and fall of his chest become slower and slower. And when, at last, Senyaka stopped struggling, and his eyes rolled back in his head, Kyle let him fall, almost gently, and put one foot on his throat. "Who the hell said I was going to kill you anyway? I'm an X-Man."

***

If it wasn't the throbbing in his arms and legs distracting him, it was the pounding in his head. Or the bleeding. It could have definitly been the blood. Kyle sat on the dusty counter where a cash register had once been and methodically working a large shard of glass out of his left arm. ~Goddamn psycho just had to throw me into the only window that wasn't broken. Fucker.~ He thought, and ignored the dry response of ~You would have done it to him, if you could have.~.

He finally got it out, threw it behind him and clamped the arm between his thighs to slow the bleeding. Outside, he could her Terry - of course, who couldn't hear Terry, and couldn't see a damn thing, but he wouldn't be any good to anyone until he could use both arms. Jan was really in the mood to zap someone, but battles seemed to be over or under control, and while she knew Kyle could heal, it was obvious that he had been hurt and now that she would no longer have to dodge anything, Jan wanted to check on him. He could hear her while she was tiny, Jan knew, but distracted as the feral probably was, Jan wanted to make sure she could be heard and even seen. "Hey Kyle," Jan said, approaching Kyle and beginning to grow in size.

The young man never got a chance to return the greeting, however, as someone - a very distinctive, blue-skinned someone - appeared behind him suddenly. Mystique wrapped one arm tightly around Kyle's neck, her free hand pinning his good arm and manuevering him neatly between herself and Jan.

Twisting around to try to get out of the hammerlock didn't work, and honestly, Kyle was surprised that Mystique let him try. But, he thought, if he was her, he'd probably do that too, if he wanted something. Let the person he had know they were helpless. He muttered a few swear words, and went partially limp, in the hopes that he could get her arm close enough to his face to bite it.

"Stay back," the woman said sharply, careful to keep the human shield in place despite the struggling that went on. "Move any closer and I'll break his neck."

Could Kyle heal from a broken neck? Jan wasn't too sure about that; healing from a wound or regrowing a body part was one thing, but a snapped neck sounded pretty final. Jan halted all movement, frowning a bit. "You're not getting away this time, you know," Jan told the evil blue shapeshifter.

"You're not exactly in a position to stop me. Unless you want a corpse on your hands. You may have escaped, but you have no chance of really stopping us." Mystique flashed a smile at the girl, adjusting her chokehold on Kyle. "This is a slight delay... we will get what we want sooner or later."

"Blah, blah, Magnetocakes." Kyle growled, still trying to twist around to get away. "You guys need, like, one of those political speechwriters to spice up your whole Brotherhood of Mutants thing." Not that he got all of that out in one sentence, with Mystique still holding him around the head and neck. All the twisting around did was get him jerked around so that he was in front of Mystique, nearly blocking her completely. He took a step back, only to have it matched by the scaled woman still restraining him, and Kyle realized two things. First, that Mystique was, as usual, totally naked. The second that he really didn't find blue scaled women very attractive. "You know, I know you're into us younger guys, with the whole getting nailed by Forge, but you just don't do it for me. Too evil."

"You and Forge?" Jan cried, eyes widening. "What, Magneto doesn't do it for you so you go after people who have to be, like, a quarter of your age or something? I don't know, I think you'd find Toad for your liking. He seems to suit you, if you ask me."

Mystique rolled her eyes. "It's absurd the way they're sending children out in that fancy jet of yours. Why don't you go back to high school - the gossip would fit right in there." She shifted once more, increasing the pressure on Kyle's neck until it began to restrict the flow of blood there. "Get out of my way, or your friend will die."

The hold on his throat was too tight to get words out; Kyle had to breathe through his nose, and every intake of air came with a rough gasping noise. He shook his head back and forth wildly to try to free himself and once again, it was futile. He slumped back, dropping most of his weight against Mystique and let his eyes close, only to open them briefly, looking right at Jan, and mouthed "Shoot. The. Hostage." silently.

Pretty much the last thing Jan wanted to do right now was to hurt Kyle. He'd been one of her first friends at the mansion, he really did have cute toes, and he was, well, Kyle. But right now, he was being hurt on purpose by an apparently sadistic woman who didn't care who she hurt.

"You know," Jan told Mystique, glaring at her, "for someone working on a side claiming to be all about how wonderful mutants are, saying how bad everyone else treats them, you sure seem to like hurting them a whole lot more!"

With that, her hands flew up and pointed at Kyle, the largest and most intense blasts of bioelectric energy Jan had ever generated since her original manifestation leaping from them. The blasts hit Kyle and went through him to Mystique, causing the two of them to drop to the ground. "Dude," Jan said, in awe of herself, "I rock!" Jan stepped closer to them and gave Mystique a kick before sitting down, pulling Kyle away from the unconcious shapeshifter. "Yeah, you're not getting away this time, you fucking bitch." After checking to see that Kyle was still breathing, Jan called out to Terry, "If you're done, we could use a little help here!"

***

Jan's electric bolts felt like what Kyle imagined biting a power line would've felt like. His chest hurt, and his shoulders hurt and his entire left -side- hurt all over and he hit the ground twitching.

~Don't do that again.~ He thought. Or thought he thought. Cracking one eye, he saw two things. First, Jan kicking Mystique in the ribs, which would've made him smile if he hadn't been convulsing. And second, the other Kyle, crouching over him.

Kyle tried to get up, and found that not only were his hands not responding to him, nothing was. His arms and legs felt like the overcooked noodles he made when he had put a pot on the stove and then forgotten about them for half an hour because of Guitar Hero. Damn Guitar Hero, ruining perfectly good egg noodles.

~Focus. You're dying.~ The other Kyle said, not that Kyle could hear him with the gasping that was going on. Gasping that was -him-. Oh. Right. He'd been electrocuted. Again, he tried to get up and failed, and then he felt tugging. Jan. Jan was pulling him away from Mystique.

~Yes, she's a great girl. Pay attention to me. You have torn muscles in your jaw, a concussion, three broken ribs and have lost a lot of blood getting thrown through a window.~ The other Kyle ticked off Kyle's injuries, most of which he was very aware of. Although not the concussion. ~And your heart has stopped. What do you fix first?~

If Kyle could have questioned himself, he would have. First? Fix -first-? That wasn't how it was supposed to work. But he remembered being attacked by Sabretooth, and the slippery feel of his own intestines as he held them into his gut, and how he broke his leg jumping out the window. And how by the time that the X-Men found him, the wound to his stomach was just a bleeding slash, no intestines hanging out.

For one brief second, all Kyle could think of was his heart, lying still in his chest, and how all the other injuries didn't matter if he was dead. How Jan would blame herself, how Terry would too. And how Forge would probably kill him if he died. ~Good. That's right, you can't help them if you're dead.~

He didn't know what restarting his heart should feel like, and it didn't matter, because before his vision started to go black and red and white at the edges, he felt an intense burning in his chest, and then a flutter, like he was going to throw up only in the wrong place, and then the gentle swish-thud of his heartbeat.

The last thing he heard before passing out was the rhythmic thunder of rapid footfalls, and the sound of destruction, like a human-shaped avalanche making its way towards them. It was the sound of pure anger, unrestrained.

Nimrod had arrived.