xp_logs | Krypteia: Dark Wings

The X-Men arrive. But what do you do when the 'bad guys' are kids?

It had been a clear night. Utterly clear and rather warm for the end of September. None of the local meteorologists had predicted anything like the storm that swept in over Manhattan like a great dark blanket, with pitch-black clouds, screaming gale-force winds and driving wind.

Yet for all that, the worst of it was curiously localized. The police and emergency crews were able to reach the site of the initial incident without difficulty, to tend to the injured there. But those that headed into the woods, seeking out the source of the chaos that had shattered the otherwise-pleasant Saturday evening found themselves facing zero visibility and winds so strong that their progess was slowed to a crawl.

Higher up in the storm, shrouded by clouds, a black plane dove towards the park in a careful trajectory, and dropped two pairs of X-Men into the madness below.

--

Jean had her hair pulled back, but somehow tendrils always managed to get loose. Which, in this case, meant they were now plastered to her forehead and dripping rainwater into her eyes as she and Cain made their way through the park. She was cold and wet, but neither of those things really took top billing in her mind as she scanned the minds of the few people who were still around, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

For his part, Cain was thankful for the domed iron helmet that kept the water out of his eyes. Restricted his peripheral vision, though, and he had to keep pivoting back and forth as he walked slowly through Central Park.

"Can't see for shit through this rain, Jeannie," he grumbled. "Too many damn people around, can't tell who's who. Gimme a target already."

"These are all civilians," Jean said, shoving futilely at her hair one last time and wiping her eyes. "Confused, some verging on panic. Nobody out here knows what's going on. I think we need to head further into the park."

"Suits me," Cain replied, pushing forward. He didn't have to raise his voice, just hunching his shoulders and trudging forward through the rain was enough to convince most everyone nearby to find somewhere else to be that wasn't in the Juggernaut's way.

One of the best things about being teamed with Cain in weather like this was that he had a lee side. She was still wet, but letting the big man take the brunt of the wind alleviated some of the cold which, in turn, helped her focus a bit more, and they hadn't been walking that much longer before Jean paused. "That's... odd," she muttered.

What had drawn her attention was barely visible up ahead through the darkness of the storm. A lanky teenager was moving rapidly between the trees, and unlike the civilians they'd passed before, he wasn't heading towards the outskirts of the park. He was quite obviously heading towards a given location, moving from cover to cover, rarely out in the open for more than a moment.

Jean's eyes were drawn to the source of the strangeness and she stopped dead, studying him for a moment. "Cain, there," she said, pointing to the boy. "His mind... it's warped." There really wasn't any other word for it, and she really couldn't explain how. It just... didn't make any sense.

Seeing the motion, Cain took a half-step back, then rushed forward for the treeline. "Sucker's moving pretty fast, like he's got somewhere to be," he barked into his comlink as he hit an oak tree at half-speed, reducing it to a spray of splinters as he charged right through in pursuit. A rock that would have tripped up anyone else was crushed to powder under his feet as he could see the thin youth zipping in front of him and got a good look at him through the rain.

That made him lose a step, more surely than any obstacle could have. "Jeannie, he's just a kid."

Jean had started into motion only a few seconds behind Cain, still thrown by the bizarre structure of the boy's mind. "He's definitely one of the attackers," she confirmed, darting out from behind Cain as he faltered and coming towards the boy at an angle. "Can't read his mind at all, but there are images..."

Afterwards, with time to contemplate and discuss what had happened, it would be obvious that the youngster had frozen in the instant Jean's mind had touched his. The reaction the closer scan provoked was instant and violent; he whirled towards Jean, and the sudden roaring explosion of sound was far louder than the rumble of the thunder. Rocks, dirt and trees disintegrated, the ground separating them tearing open.

Jean reacted without thinking, disturbingly like the boy, diving sideways out of the way of the incoming rush of... whatever it was at the same time that she struck out, knocking the boy farther away from them.

Cain took the blast full-on and was pushed back slightly, his feet digging furrows in the ground. "Son of a bitch!" he hollered, watching both Jean and the boy fly in opposite directions. Determining at a glance that his teammate was fine, Cain charged through the rain at their assailant.

The energy that the boy was putting off was boiling the raindrops to steam before they could even land. Instinctively keeping his distance, Cain cocked a fist back. "Give it up, son. Nowhere to run. You don't wanna throw down on us, trust me."

A kid with so much power, altogether too much like an earlier mission--

--the girl had nearly blown the Blackbird out of the sky. Nate was keeping it together, Hank and Bobby couldn't get in close, he was the only person who could do something. Everything was exploding and she was laughing or screaming, he couldn't tell. She raised her hands -was she trying to attack him or protect herself?

She was the enemy.

She was just a kid--

Cain shook his head, dismissing the armor around him and standing before the boy, rain plastering his red hair down over his forehead as he lowered his fist. "Just give it up, son," he said quietly, almost pleading.

The boy, half-crouched in a defensive position, stared up at Cain, his expression flat, utterly expressionless. After a moment, he lowered his hands - and there was another deafening blast of that same strange energy, propelling him into the air, in an arc that took him back out of Cain's reach before the X-Man could react. Two running steps and then he was airborne again, bounding in the same direction he'd been heading before, stealth sacrificed for speed.

Jean took a deep breath as she stared after the retreating figure. She definitely understood Cain's hesitation - he was just a boy. But, at the same time... "We have to go after him," she said, and already she was moving, telekinesis increasing the strength of her legs as she started to run, forbearing to fly and leave her teammate behind.

For a long moment, Cain just looked down at his massive hands as the rain fell between his fingers, then he looked up at the fleeing figure in the distance. "Yeah," he said with something like regret. "S'pose we do."

Two large steps and the armor was forming around him again, black iron steaming in the rain. "Juggernaut to Cyclops," he said flatly into the comlink, "Runner headed towards you. We're on our way."

--

As fast as they had moved, as sure as they were of Angelo's position thanks to Charles's direction, they were almost too late. As he and Ororo finally reached the clearing where their fellow X-Man and his group had been forced into making a stand, Scott was aware at a glance of two things.

One, there were considerably more people here than just the group from the mansion - nearly half a dozen more, trying to keep out of the way, and apparently also trying to shield someone in the middle of their group.

Two, the attackers were very definitely mutants, and at least two of them were energy-projectors. Which meant that if they didn't stop this fight right now, in close quarters like this, someone was going to get hurt or worse very quickly.

Scott aimed his first optic blast at a tree. It toppled immediately, falling quite neatly between Angelo's group and one of the attackers -the very young attackers, Scott thought with a sudden chill. The youngster simply turned towards him and Ororo and let off another of those blinding white energy blasts. Scott hit the dirt, pulling Ororo down with him automatically.

Diverting attention was good, but putting an end to it altogether would be even better. As the blasts continued to blaze over their heads Ororo rolled to one side, peering out around the tree to better gauge the young mutant's distance. Visibility was not ideal, which worked both for and against them, for it seemed their opponent was advancing in hopes of finding them (and likely finishing them) more easily.

Deciding to up the ante even more, Ororo called a fog, manipulating the winds and the dense vapor and wrapping it around the mutant tightly. The energy blasts now came at random from within the cloud, veering wildly from side to side with less control as their controller lost sight completely.

Thus protected, the weatherworker neared, hoping to get the opportunity to land one good blow before one of the random blasts caused any further damage. It was risky, but as she ducked and dodged into the fog, she knew it was necessary.

"Skin!" Scott bellowed, seeing Angelo trying to close with one of the young mutants while avoiding the blue fireballs the boy was throwing at him. He was avoiding getting hit, and might yet manage to take the kid down, but Scott didn't want to risk it. "Cover and evac!" Angelo could be getting the girls and those civilians out of here and out of the line of fire.

He sent an optic blast at the fire-thrower, to buy Angelo a moment. In the next instant, his gaze flickered across Callisto, quite calmly holding her own against a girl who seemed to be stepping in and out of shadows and moving at a not-quite-human speed. Tatiana and Noriko were with the other civilians... and damn it, Karolina's glow was visible even through the storm. Visible, and drawing attention.

It was useless trying to take shelter in the trees. The sun hadn't been down so long that her powers were at all dimmed through lack of energy and her wild emotions made her powers flare, rainbow lights sparking in every direction, reaching out to touch her companions and resisting every attempt to pull it back. Karolina broke away from the others, knowing her presence just made them all bigger targets and pressed herself against a tree, fingers digging into the wet, dirty bark as rain lashed fighters and victims alike. She screamed as blue fireball flew close to her and shattered out against a sudden shield of light. "Oh God, oh God, oh God."

"KAROLINA! STAY DOWN!" Scott yelled, aiming another blast at the fireball-thrower.

A lightning bolt hit nearby, the crack of thunder deafening, and he looked back in Ororo's direction to see her lit up with a tell-tale glow. He couldn't tell what had just happened, but he spotted the girl fighting Callisto break off and dart towards Ororo, disappearing into the shadows as she went.

Scott clenched his jaw and fired off a series of low-powered blasts into the space between her last position and Ororo's current location, hoping to luck out. Nothing.

The other civilians were moving back, deeper into cover, pale blurs of faces unrecognizable in the darkness of the storm. Keeping the young mutants from identifying their original target, the Professor whispered in his mind, the words accomplished by a flash of a woman's face - the target - and then Scott was ducking behind a tree as another blast of white light came at him.

He reached out on the switchboard for Jean. They needed her and Cain here, and then needed them right--what the hell? There was something coming at them out of the storm, and as the figure got closer, Scott saw that it was another teenager in camouflage, blasts of energy from his arms bearing him up into the air in great leaps. Following him, and knocking over the odd tree as he came, was Cain.

Cain pushed off from the ground as he broke from the treeline, arcing up in a deceptively-high hurdle as the energy-blasting mutant came down. The combined landing wasn't unlike slipping on a trampoline, as the ground rippled under the force of Cain's stomp and the boy's energy blast.

The youth was the first one to get to his feet, looking around - acquiring targets, Cain realized. But not like a soldier or a professional. Just a panicked kid. Well, if it's a target he wants...

Roaring, Cain drew both arms back as the youth unleashed a devastating blast. Expecting it, Cain leaned into it, taking the brilliant energy explosion directly to the chest, but using the momentum to smash his fists together over the boy's head with the sound of an artillery shell exploding.

He stumbled with the impact, landing facedown on the grass on top of the kid, taking care not to crush him. Taking a moment to glance under him, the boy was bleeding from his nose, unconscious but breathing.

"One down!" he bellowed.

Jean was coming up on the other side, heading for the knot of civilians - which was breaking up into smaller groups as an energy blast and a string of fireballs landed near them. Panic, Scott identified, and swore as the woman whose face Charles had shown him was suddenly visible in the blue fire-light. Caught in the open for a split-second as she turned to follow the others.

The kid with the blasts saw her too. Jean was shielding the others against the fireball-thrower, wasn't looking the right way. And white light was already gathering around the kid's hands. Scott reacted instantly, his gaze locking onto the ground at the kid's feet.

But in that same instant, something slammed into him from behind, hard. What had been a controlled, carefully targeted blast turned into something else entirely as he lurched forward.

It was like having your arm jostled, just as you pulled the trigger of a gun. Only worse. The spike of adrenaline made the blast far stronger than it should have been, and the brief loss of balance made it go wild.

It hit the boy squarely in the chest, and the sickening crunch was audible even at this distance, over the howl of the wind. And everything froze.

No. No, I didn't mean-

The world seemed to speed back up as the boy hit the ground. Surely everyone hadn't actually stopped dead in their tracks. It had just seemed like that. Scott himself was frozen, now, staring at the fallen would-be assassin and absolutely unable to summon any sort of reaction.

He'd hit the ground like a rag doll. Like a broken...

The two attackers on their feet reacted instantly, the girl appearing from behind him - had she hit him? Was that it? - and dashing over to the boy Cain had knocked out a minute ago. She pulled him to his feet and vanished into the shadows with him. The other boy stopped throwing fireballs at the retreating civilians and ran into the woods without looking back.

Jean's focus was elsewhere, dealing with the few civilians who remained, trying to shepherd them out of the area and protecting them in the meantime, but at the sudden burst of numb horror down the link she turned, just in time to see the remaining would-be assassins collectively turn tail and run. On the ground, though, one boy remained, and Scott's focus was so totally on him that she immediately understood what had happened, even though his mind was almost blank from shock.

With the attackers gone she was free to turn her attention away from the bystanders, and she was running towards the fallen boy before she'd even had time to really think about it.

Part of Scott's mind woke up, screamed at him to do something, not to stand there gaping. His feet seemed to get the idea and he was heading towards Jean and the boy before he'd made the conscious decision to do so. "Jean," he said raggedly, "is he-" His throat closed. He knew how much force had been behind that blast, he'd felt it...

She'd dropped to her knees beside him, tearing open the collar of his shirt to get at his pulse. "Heart beat's there, he's breathing..." she said, but didn't elaborate - the pulse was too irregular, the breath strained. Jean could see where the ribs on the right side were broken, the side of the boy's chest curving in entirely the wrong way. "He needs a hospital, fast."

Think, that part of his brain snarled at him. THINK, damn it. Scott took a deep, shaky breath and then another, wiping rain away from his good eye and looking skyward. "Storm, keep up the cover," he said hoarsely over the coms. "Cannonball, we need you. Get back in here, make a close pass over our location-" He was turning back to Jean even as he said that, reaching out on their link as he spoke aloud. You and Cain and- In his peripheral vision, Angelo, and there was the assassin's target, that woman with him. And her, and the boy. Get yourselves up to the plane, get back to the mansion.

"The mansion?" Jean asked, startled enough to look up from her patient. "Sc... Cyclops, a hospital. NewYork-Presbyterian is close..." And close was going to matter. If any of his ribs had punctured something internally...

Scott nearly shuddered as that particular realization hit, and for a moment, he almost took back the decision. But they couldn't risk it. Not when they didn't know who was behind this, whether there were more of them, whether they could track the boy - he let that spill down the link to Jean, not trusting to his voice. They couldn't chance a fight in a hospital.

Jean bit her lip, but Scott was right - the boy's companions had seemingly left him, but that didn't mean they were gone for good. She nodded, then called out, "Juggernaut. Come on. We're going up."