xp_logs | Seven Minutes In Heaven: Spartans

Angelo and the SHIELD team discover that the most dangerous mutant among their attackers may be the middle-aged history professor. Outside, things go from bad to worse - mostly for Nathan - as Saidullayev gets an assist. Old grudges are the best kind.

"I hate working under the gun," Weston muttered, his hands perfectly steady as he worked on removing the hard drive he hadn't had time to de-crypt. The three scientists were rushing to collect anything useful or potentially informative that was small enough to carry, while Baird and Angelo were watching the door.

There was the sound of gunfire, from elsewhere in the facility, and Baird winced, listening to reports from his team over his headset. "Your comment's more literal than I like. Hurry up."

"We're moving as fast as we can," Morrisseau said tightly, shoving the files he'd found in one of the cabinets into a case. "If we don't get some of this out-"

"Might have to choose", Angelo said grimly. "Leave stuff behind or run out of time t'get it out of here."

"I don't like the idea of leaving anything for prospective competition," Baird said, leaning out just enough to get a look down the hallway. There was no sign of anyone approaching the lab, which meant that the the rest of the X-Men and the two SHIELD operatives were finding at least a degree of success in their diversionary efforts. None of them knew how long that would last. They were rather badly outnumbered. "Especially given what we're dealing with."

#We've got eyes on the helicopter,# Nathan said in Angelo's mind, his mental 'tone' having that curiously multi-layered effect that meant the comment had been directed to everyone on the switchboard. #They left enough people out here to make a fight out of it. Checking back in five minutes.#

Angelo nodded absently in response to the telepathic message, then focused on Baird. "Anyone got anythin' we can destroy it with, if it comes down to it?"

"I can't honestly say I thought to bring explosives with me," Baird said humorlessly.

"Then we'll just have to improvise." He was already eyeing the larger objects, sizing them up.

"Who are these people?" Payette asked, sounding a little shrill. Cutting off Baird before he could reply to Angelo's not-quite-suggestion. "Dr. Grey didn't really explain."

That got her a look from Angelo. "Try not to panic. They're mutant supremacists, in their way. Lookin' to build a new world."

"Well, I didn't think they were Amnesty International come to document potential human rights abuses," Payette snapped, her hands shaking as she used a digital camera to take snapshots of the lab. Though she was the youngest of the scientists on the SHIELD team, her sudden attack of nerves had come on rather suddenly. She'd seemed just as steady as the others when Angelo had first reached the lab.

Weston looked up in surprise from his work. "Settle down, Jules-"

"Don't tell me to settle down!"

"Hey! Enough!" Baird said firmly, looking a bit put off by the sudden argument. "Let's focus on what we're doing, okay?"

His words didn't seem to penetrate. "You asked," Angelo snapped back at Payette, looking out into the hallway. "You want me t'give you chapter an' verse on who they are an' what they've done?"

Baird's angry look got turned on him. "Not productive," he grated, his eyes flickering back to Payette for a moment, assessing. He took a step away from the door, towards her, but was forestalled by Angelo's retort.

"An' neither are you bein' helpful!" He gestured to Payette. "Look, she's scared, they're comin', we need to just grab what we can, trash the rest an' get out of here now."

Baird's expression went flat as he looked back at Angelo. The assessing look was still there, however. "Kid, I am trying to give you a little credit for a basic level of competence here, but I've been running operations like this since before you went through puberty. We have a mission to accomplish, and until they come knocking on the door, I'm going to keep trying to do the job. Weston!" he said sharply. "Get that hard drive packed."

"Maybe I should tell you what they've done", Angelo muttered. "Might help you get the urgency, here."

The gunfire was getting closer. There was the sound of an explosion somewhere in the facility, followed by another, rattling the building. "Okay, that's not good," Baird said tightly, checking his weapon. "Doesn't sound like the diversion is going all that well."

"Just when are you gonna give up an' cut your losses, Baird?" Angelo demanded, standing stiff and ready to run in the doorway.

"Kid, zip it," Baird said, sounding aggravated now. His eyes darted back and forth between his team members, his concentration visibly fraying. More gunfire, and Payette let out a high-pitched laugh, nearly dropping her camera.

"Diversion, right. Their guys with guns are shooting in one direction, and those mutants are probably sneaking up on us from another." There was something increasingly... off about the look in her eyes as she moved around the lab. There was fear there, but it was too much for the situation. Too much for a trained SHIELD operative.

"Julie, settle down," Morrisseau said, sounding surprised. "One thing at a time here. Finish-"

"No! You're all being idiots, staying here for the sake of information about some genetics project that may never have gone anywhere-"

"They let you out of training too soon," Thirsk said, speaking for the first time since the attack and sounding utterly contemptuous as he glared at Payette, his own work seemingly forgotten. He looked very much like he wanted to reach out and shake her, literally. "You don't put someone on an active team who can lose her nerve like this."

"Leave her alone", Angelo snapped, unexpectedly in her defence. "We know they got a telepath, who knows who the hell else they've got out there? Payette, you want out, come with me."

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Baird growled, pulling Angelo back out of the doorway and giving him a push towards the center of the lab. The focus in his eyes was back, but fixed on Angelo. As if the only thing that mattered right now was getting the younger man back under control. Baird didn't even look towards the door at the next burst of gunfire. "You're not taking a member of my team anywhere, and frankly, to me it looks like you're losing your nerve, too. So I'm not keen on the idea of letting you make a run for it and get yourself killed, either!"

"Would all of you shut up?" Weston suddenly yelled, pushing back away from the table and advancing on them. "How am I suposed to work, with this much fucking noise? What happened to a little professionalism!" The light in his eyes was not anywhere near rational.

Angelo spun towards him, jerking away from Baird's hands. "What the hell happened to yours, if you can't work in whatever conditions?"

"I'm not taking that from some costumed vigilante!" Weston snapped.

"What is wrong with all of you?" Morrisseau said, looking absolutely incredulous as his glance moved back and forth rapidly between his teammates and Angelo. "This doesn't make any sense. Everyone, take a deep breath and-"

"Shut up!" Payette shrieked and flung herself at him.

Her attack was simultaneous with Angelo taking a swing at Weston.

It all went rapidly downhill from there. What had been undercurrents were suddenly there on the surface, fear and anger and doubt whipped up into a fury and colliding violently. Dissolving into an outright physical scuffle that shouldn't have happened. Not with trained SHIELD operatives and a trained X-Man. But it did, and it accomplished exactly what it had been intended to do.

Nobody was watching the door anymore.

Tara Trask peeked once around the doorframe, and her lips curved in a faint smile. Then she fixed an expression of fury on her face and walked in, weaving among the combatants. She kept to the backs of the largest ones so that they wouldn't look over their opponents' heads and see her, and she moved belligerently so that a casual glance wouldn't make her look out of place. But her feet were entirely silent.

She picked up the hard drive, then Morrisseau's case of files, and then walked out the same way.

Then she glanced down at her prizes, smiled, and proceeded swiftly down the hall and around the nearest corner.

Someone did happen to look up from the fight just long enough to see her go - someone who knew her face. Angelo happened to look up and his eyes narrowed, then he extracted himself from the fight and hurried out of the room after her.

Tara looked back over her shoulder at the sound of footsteps. She glanced forward again briefly, evaluating her position, and then turned back and blew him a kiss before rounding the corner. She nodded to her accomplice and kicked into a sprint to get out of sight before Angelo arrived.

The man in body armor stepped forward and fired off two shots - at Angelo's chest, not at his head. Even with Angelo's own body armor beneath the leathers, it was enough to knock him down, even if the bullets didn't penetrate. That had been the goal, after all. The lady had expressed a reluctance to see any of the X-Men killed, and his employer had told him to do as he was told.

They didn't penetrate but, as Doug could have told him, it hurt like being kicked in the chest by a donkey. He was falling before his brain caught up enough to realize what had happened.

After a moment, Trask came back a few steps, looking down toward Angelo. "Not bad," she said. "Very observant. But you should look where you're going." A thoughtful pause. "Tell Nathan he worries too much. Goodbye."

--

Nathan wasn't sure just why Saidullayev had been obliging enough to move this away from the buildings, but he wasn't complaining. The man was a genius when it came to the collateral damage, and Nathan wasn't eager to see him rack up any more today. This was the first time they'd fought in the open like this since Alcatraz. There was no reason to hold back. And he intended to win.

Even so, he didn't fuck around with TK-shockwaves; they weren't that far away from the facility, and he wasn't going to chance it. Wasteful, anyway. He focused his TK tightly through the psimitar instead, flinging sledgehammer-blow after sledgehammer-blow at Saidullayev's shields, and redirecting the random pieces of equipment and outbuildings the other telekinetic sent at him.

My multitasking is better than your multitasking, you son of a bitch. It wasn't just the psimitar, either. It was all the years at Mistra, and all the Askani training Saidullayev hadn't had. The lines of force twisted and warped around them, and Nathan played them like the strings of a harp.

The ground exploded beneath his feet, but Saidullayev wasn't the only one wearing shields. The impact sent him airborne, but Nathan steadied himself almost immediately, taking himself back out of immediate range in a gliding leap and sending the telekinetic equivalent of a battering ram straight at Saidullayev's chest. Not holding much back. It would have killed an unshielded person, probably broken every bone in their body.

As it was, it cracked Saidullayev's shields. The Chechen flew backwards like a rag doll and into the last patchy remains of a snowbank.

His psimitar still blazing gold, Nathan took himself airborne of his own volition this time, intending to land a few feet short of Saidullayev and finish him off. A nice severe concussion would do the trick, and make it easy to take him into custody.

It didn't quite turn out as he planned.

Nathan's intended ballistic arc ended abruptly as he was slammed into the ground by an unseen force, grinding him down into the snow. Footsteps crunched behind him, and a very familiar voice called to him from a few feet away.

"I told you the last time that I was the only real Spartan left, you poor son of a bitch," Lense hissed as he walked over to kneel in the snow next to Nathan, amplifying the pull of gravity around the telekinetic to keep Cable pressed to the ground. "Surprised to see me?"

"Timely arrival, John." Saidullayev had hauled himself back up off the ground, and moved towards them, limping heavily but wearing a pleased little smile. "John and I have talked, Nathan, since the beginning of our... association. I find we have a great deal in common."

"Yes," Nathan gritted, spots forming in his vision as he struggled to draw air into his lungs. "You both talk... far too much."

His psimitar was lying several feet away, outside the immediate effect of Lense's gravity field. Didn't matter. It still had a charge, and he poured more into it as it jerked up off the ground and blasted Lense.

Or blasted at him, rather. Because a TK shield interposed itself, cutting enough of the impact to make it briefly staggering, instead of incapacitating. Gravity went back to normal, but even as Nathan rolled back to his feet, stumbling, Lense was recovering as well.

And the blast hadn't gone anywhere near Saidullayev. Which meant that attacking and not defending had been a very bad idea. The Chechen gestured almost casually, a brief flick of his hand, and a wall of force smashed into Nathan, throwing him back to the ground. The impact drove the air out of his lungs as surely as Lense's first attack had, and this time, there was a fiery, stabbing pain in his chest that told him the body armor hadn't been able to do its job.

"I'd prefer not to break your toy, Nathan," he heard Saidullayev say, almost conversationally. "I'd like to bring it back with me, to see if it can be duplicated. Tara likes the idea of arming me appropriately."

"Oh, Nathan doesn't like people taking what's his," Lense taunted, twisting his wrist to divert the gravity field around Nathan sideways, slamming him through a snowbank and into a flat rock outcropping. Up and down ceased to have meaning as a blinding barrage of granulated snow avalanched sideways, blasting into Nathan and cresting like a wave over the rock.

"You see, that's the wonderful thing about partnerships, Nathan," he continued, flinging Nathan off the rock and into the air for Saidullayev to batter him around with telekinetic force. "Two strengths, complementing each other. Without any of those parasitic pack instincts getting in the way."

This was not going well. All he could do was try and block the hits as they came at him. But with Lense spinning him around like this, he couldn't see the lines of force properly, and so he only blocked a few. Not nearly enough. Saidullayev was taking the exact same approach himself had been, a few minutes ago - the carefully-placed hammer blows. Mocking him? Maybe. Didn't matter.

He was in trouble. Gravity reasserted itself, almost dismissively, and he hit the ground hard. Get up. At the back of his mind, far, far away on a link that was the barest golden thread at this distance, he felt a flicker of panic. Moira. Or maybe Rachel. The thought of them feeling this, even halfway around the world, gave him a rush of desperate strength. Get up! Spitting blood, Nathan pulled himself up to his hands and knees, trying to focus enough to find the psimitar. But his head was swimming.

A soundless approach, and Saidullayev was standing there, gazing down at him. "Is this all it took, Nathan?" he asked. "Finding a worthwhile business associate, pooling our resources? That's... disappointing." There was a flash of something like petulant anger in his cold eyes. "Get up. This is not acceptable, Askani'son."

The kick that landed in Nathan's ribs had enough telekinesis behind it to send him airborne again for a moment before he crashed back to the ground. A grunt of pain escaped him as it was followed by a telekinetic blow, then another. Targeted to hurt, not to knock him out. To goad.

"Not at all acceptable," Saidullayev growled. "Get up, Nathan. Fight me, or I'm going to make you beg-"

The telekinetic shockwave Nathan managed just in time to cut him off was weaker than it should have been, and so unfocused that Rachel probably could have done better in a temper. But it did hit Saidullayev head-on and sent him toppling backwards. Buying Nathan a moment to get back up again.

"Dream on," he spat at the reeling Chechen, every breath hurting. Ordinarily he wouldn't have wasted the oxygen, but if he could just get another moment, enough to pull his shields together, maybe he could buy himself enough time. Jean was coming, he could sense it.

The next second found a gravitic distortion washing over Nathan, his legs flying up into the air while his upper body was slammed into the ground again, spinning over and over like a pinwheel before being crushed back into the compacted snow. Lense stalked towards him, wiping particles of ice away from the hood of his parka. "You're right," he said conversationally. "He does talk too much. But you'd be surprised how many little annoyances you can ignore when you both hate the same things."

He punctuated the statement with a kick to Nathan's chest, the force aided by a pinpoint focusing of gravity, turning Lense's boot into the equivalent of a quarter-ton weight smashing into Nathan's body and sending him skidding across the tundra. Another wave, jumping from zero to ten gees in a second while Lense seemed to glide weightlessly over the snow. "You know, Nathan, you were always blind. So goddamn self-righteous in your little crusade. You wanted to free us?"

Nathan barely rolled out of the way of the next gravity-enhanced stomp that left a crater in the ice. "I didn't want to be saved!" Lense howled over the sound of the wind. "I was happy! I had a purpose! Before Mistra found me, I was nothing! What goddamn right did you have to make me nothing again?"

With a gesture, he raised a gravitic bubble under Nathan, sending up a spray of snow as he lifted the X-Man into the air. With his other hand, he gestured subtly, and the wreckage of the helicopter began to slowly float up from the ground. "But I found a purpose, Nathan. Or rather, it found me. You wanted to be a crusader, some kind of white knight. Kinda poetic that I became the Black Knight just to get the chance to kill you."

--

Kyle had taken the cautious route towards securing the helicopter, coming out of nowhere to drag one of the guards off, knocking him out before the other four could do anything more than run towards him. The wounds from being clawed in the arms would heal - Kyle didn't much like it, but five guys with guns versus one X-Man with claws and fangs meant the claws and fangs had to come into play much more than usual. Where a rake across the neck or cheek was to distract before, now it was across the eyes, and to disable.

For all his caution and care, he still took a bullet grazing across the arm. It did more to damage his uniform than to hurt Kyle himself. Kyle growled, and brought his knee up into one of the guard's face, shattering his nose and a cheekbone and spun to face the man who had shot him. Who took one look at the wild-haired man with half-healing scrapes on his face, a torn jacket sleeve, and blood on his mouth and fled. "Shit." he muttered to himself.

He'd barely paid attention to the sounds of Nate's fight until his own was over, save for guards groaning on the ground - and in the act of wiping his face on his sleeve, the air carried a voice Kyle knew all too damn well. "Double shit."

--

A blond and black-leathered blur came out from behind the debris, racing on all fours like a greyhound to tackle into Lense. Kyle put his entire weight into the tackle, two hundred pounds of feral mutant plus any extra weight that momentum - and gravity - lent him. His shoulders went into the gravity-manipulator's stomach, throwing Lense off his feet and sending both of them to the ground.

Lense hit the ground hard, sending up a spray of snow as he reversed gravity under himself, bouncing into the air as if on a trampoline, pivoting to try and catch his breath. He looked down at Kyle and arched an eyebrow. "Well, well, well," he gasped, one arm wrapped around his ribs. "He frees you from one army to enlist you in another. I'm sorry it had to come to this, kid. Told you the first time, it's not about you. But now, you're in my way."

He extended one arm to his side, palm-down while the other shot out in front of him, fingers clenching and unclenching. Light seemed to bend and refract around Lense as gravity started playing tricks that just didn't mesh with the laws of a rational universe until the ground began to shake and shift, varying chunks of matter trying to pull in multiple directions at once.

"Here's where it ends, Nathan!" Lense screamed. "Ilyas? Kill him."

Blackness pushing in at the edges of his vision, Nathan got a glimpse of Saidullayev moving towards him - effortlessly, somehow, despite the disruption Lense was causing. Pain-racked and disoriented, he couldn't track the lines of force Saidullayev was using, let alone disrupt them. He couldn't even break the grip the other telekinetic had on him. No...

"I think," Saidullayev said, just loudly enough for Nathan to hear him, a slight smile playing on his lips, "that Tara is going to be very angry with me."

The broken hulk of the helicopter came flying at him. He tried to catch it, to redirect it. But everything was moving, the whole world was unstable. The weight of the wreck slammed into his last-ditch shield at the same moment that Saidullayev let go of him. He didn't even have a moment to take a breath as he fell, the ice cracking beneath him.

The shock of the icy water barely registered, because he was still falling, the weight of the helicopter pushing him downwards. Farther from the light. The helicopter was going to crush him, if he didn't - somehow, he pushed back at it, one last flicker of telekinesis, and he felt metal tear and warp. But it was still falling towards him, and the bottom was coming up too fast.

His head smashed against something hard, and what little light had been left winked out.

The gravity cut in and out, and Kyle hit the ground several times, hard, face scraping against the grit embedded in the snow and ice. As best as he could, he pulled his legs up and covered his eyes with one arm, and then the bouncing ground to a halt, with Kyle half buried in the snow. He rolled over and got his arms and legs under him, and pushed up, arms shaking with cold, and the effort of fighting against the increased gravity.

He didn't get far before the air pressed him back down to the ground, Kyle's own body too heavy to do more than drag himself along on his stomach. It was only a few feet, and felt like miles, and then with one last surge, claws on his hands and feet dug into the ground, he pulled himself into an area where the snow fell up.

The rapid change took Kyle to his feet a little too fast, leaving him wobbly and slightly dizzy and bleeding from the foot where two claws had been yanked from his toes. He straightened, and felt the blood rise to his head, and turned, ignoring the feeling that his head was still moving even after it stopped. In the pocket of lowered gravity, Kyle's weight was too much to send him just flying into the air - but a leap that would have normally put him into a tree, or atop a car send him high, more than twice again his own height. And straight into Lense's back.

The impact stunned the gravity manipulator, enough to cause him to lose concentration on his powers for a moment - and for natural gravity to take hold. While Kyle was agile enough to easily roll with a ten-meter fall to the packed ice of the Alaskan tundra, Lense had no such ability, slamming into the ground with a dull thud. Yet surprisingly, he forced himself to his feet, coughing up blood as he doubled over.

"Come on then, kid," he taunted Kyle with a "come-and-get-it" gesture. "Call me out. See how the new generation stacks up. But ask yourself this - how long can Nate hold his breath? Free will, kid. Make a choice."

Kyle stayed crouched on the ground, the only sign of conflict a twitch of his claws, and a blank expression on his face as he met Lense's eyes. He stared coldly at the ex-Mistra agent for a second, and then shook his head. Then, as though he had been frozen, he blinked, lips curling back in a snarl. and then turned without a word and sprinted for the wreck of the helicopter and the hole in the ice that Nate had disappeared into.

With the gravity distortions around him fading, Saidullayev strode casually over to where Nathan's psimitar was lying on the ground and picked it up, hefting it experimentally. He tilted his head, listening to voices over his earpiece. "Time to go, perhaps," he said idly to Lense as he turned towards the remaining helicopters. "The others are on their way out."

Lense spat out another mouthful of blood and hauled himself upright. "Be right with you," he grunted, turning to face the broken hole in the ice. Sarcastically, he gave a quick salute to the dark water. "Say hello to MacInnis for me, you stupid son of a bitch," he intoned, then followed Saidullayev away from the scene.