Day Zero - Endgame

[x-juggernaut.livejournal.com]

As it all comes down, a climactic confrontation takes place inside the Citadel.



After coming face-to-face with Death, Betsy tried to psionically connect but her attempts were blocked. Within moments, the metal case floated away and Betsy could do nothing but followed the psi-signature, keep hammering away at its defenses, and try to break through. She wasn't nearly fast enough. Betsy turned a corner, hugging the Northeast wall of 37th and Eighth. Her hands left a trail of blood as she moved. Stopping, she tilted her head to the left, as if listening for some hint of a sign. She waited, eyes closed, blood pooling onto a spot on the ground.

A scream forced Betsy's body to attention and she found herself turning her unseeing eyes towards the source of the disturbance. Soaring through the New York skyline, she found herself staring up at the Horsemen Death from the vantage point of a middle-aged woman, collapsed on the street out of fear. The woman was five blocks southward of her, so close Betsy could see herself at the edge of the woman's peripheral sight. The older woman shook as she stared up at the metal grave of someone Betsy knew and had called friend.

After a few steps, Betsy began moving towards the metal carcass, using the older woman's sight as a guide. She stopped just shy of the pair and tried to level her eyes with the two peepholes that represented Alison's blue eyes but not quite managing. "Oh, how I've missed you, light bright."

Death cocked her head, the remnants of her armor barely clinging to her frame. Her previous battle with the X-Men had left her battered and injured, but if there was any doubt or regret, it didn't show on her soot-streaked face. Her eyes looked out blankly, perusing Betsy.

She moved haltingly, reaching up to her face and brushing away the shards of the metal mask that remained. Her expression didn't change as her eyes literally glowed, pulsing a beam of laser light that cut the ground in front of Betsy's shuffling feet.

Even with the telepathic strain, Betsy focused her abilities to hijack the prone woman's sight and grimaced as she took a step closer. The sound of breaking stone grew louder and the horrified gasps coming from behind her soon turned to whimpering but Betsy stood her ground and pushed her way into the formed barriers of Alison's mind. "I won't lose you like this. Stop fighting me, Ali. Please."

Death's face contorted in an expression of conflict.

"B...B...Bet..."

The sounds were harsh, as if coming from a throat that hadn't spoken -or sung - in a long time. Or screamed itself past the breaking point. For a second, Alison Blaire looked at Betsy in panic --

-- then Death's hand shot forward, two incandescent beams of laser light bracketing the psi's head, barely singing her purple hair. Two steps brought the women face to face, blank blue eyes staring into blinded purple. A slim arm darted out and shot around Betsy's waist, then a pair of glowing wings, constructs of solid light, erupted from Death's shoulders and the two shot into the air.

***

Inside the Citadel, Apocalypse moved from window to window, hammering his fist against the surface of the structure as it seemed to pulse and shake imperceptibly. "Impossible!" he growled as he paced. "This is my city. My city!"

He'd long since abandoned the concept of "our" - what these mutants were doing was an affront to him, and his rage had finally bubbled over his seemingly implacable stoic exterior. He moved as if to rant again, then paused as a figure alighted on a nearby balcony.

"Death arrives," he intoned, turning to greet his loyal Horseman as she entered, pushing Betsy in front of her.

"Hello, Bets." Pete's eyes flickered very briefly past her to Alison, and behind Apocalypse's back, for just a fraction, he looked shocked, before the bored mask he'd been wearing dropped back into place. His voice never wavered. "Come off second best in yet another fight?"

Betsy raised her head towards the sound of Pete's voice and jerked back imperceptibly. "I never did favor hand-to-hand," Betsy said with a rueful smile. "It messes up the nails so. Oh, picked up a friend while I was out.

"Oh, they have met," Apocalypse said with a smile. "You see, I knew that starting my mission in New York would attract the attention of these... I didn't even have the word until I found her. X-Men, she called them."

He walked over and cupped Alison's chin almost parentally. "I found her in Los Angeles, and it took no small amount of effort to help her find her faith. Faith in a noble cause, instead of this foolish dream of harmony with homo sapiens. Perhaps the initial methods were... extreme. But now she is my Horseman of Death, body and soul. As deadly as she is beautiful. And so very loyal."

Turning his back on the three, he looked out over the city as the Citadel shook again, buffeted by hurricane-force winds from outside. Apocalypse arched an eyebrow as a glowing firebird took to the air, bracketed by blasts of plasma that shook the Citadel to its core. "But I tire of this. Peter, Death? Kill our guest and then we will finish this charade."

Betsy moved to decimate this charlatan herself, blind or not. She'd tear him limb from limb. A dark look fell over her face as she attempted to follow him but a heavy hand landed on her shoulder, holding her firmly in place. Betsy grimaced as her the metal hand squeezed at her tender flesh. "Why don't you do it yourself, you bloody coward?" Betsy yelled. "I'll even make it easy on you. I'll let you take the first swipe."

*Forget about fuckface there for right now - Charlie's heavy mob are coming for him by the look of it, so odds are he's done for in the next few hours. The fun part is going to be snapping Al out of this, and then getting the three of us out of here. Play along with me, will you?* Pete threw the thought at Betsy, as he strode across the room.

"This is what, the third or fourth time I've managed to stick a knife in your back, Bets? There was the first time, at Charlie's, when my old boss came knocking. Then there was the whole business with me Dad, and the Hellfire Club." He grabbed her from Alison, and shoved her across the room.

"And you know the really funny bit? About the whole Hellfire Club thing? Right down to that the business in South America. Getting up infected with a really special dose of the flu, just so I could get some scrote to rifle through your brains? Al here signed off on it all. Fuck, half of it was it was her idea in the first place."

*Kick coming, get ready to roll with it*

"And yet, you somehow still thought you could trust us. You thought we were doing it for a good reason. You believed in us. And now here the three of us are."

As he spoke, Pete's eyes never left Alison's face.

*He broke her,* Her chest heaved, the strain of working her telepathy on two fronts. Yet, to others within the room, Pete's words had struck home. *The bastard found every fragile piece and shattered it.* She pulled her arm free from Alison and turned her murderous expression towards Pete's direction. "I'll make sure I won't make that mistake again."

*He ground down each piece until it was dust. Until he thought there was nothing left but I found her. Found Alison inside and she's remembering. I'll make her remember, and force it down her fucking throat.*

With Pete's warning, Betsy prepped herself and hacked into Alison's visual perception center. "You'll be dead before this is over. I promise."

"Heard that before." Pete kept up the pretense of knocking Betsy around the room while he spoke, doing his best to telegraph what was coming,warn her what to expect. "But y'know, people like me and Al here, we don't fold up just because someone might want us to. Not for good, anyway. We've got the strength to get the job done when we fucking have to."

Instead of another strike, he reached down and grabbed Betsy by the throat, and started to lift her.

*You know, this "we" crap is getting tiring. I've got an idea. Can you make her see someone other than you, just for a second? Make her see Alphonso in your place?*

"Why?" Betsy seethed, her hand protectively hugging her stomach from her position on the floor. Her other hand wet with blood, barely held her up. "So you can get your jollies off watching her kill me too, you sick fuck! Tell me what have you done anything great in your waste of a life that hasn't been puppeted by some megalomaniac."

He lifted Betsy off the ground with one hand, then he raised his other hand, its fingertips glowing just slightly.

"I'm done being soft. And you're never going to understand why, are you? Never going to know what made me change my mind. And the rest of your short life, your borrowed fucking time, you're going to live scared and in pain, cunt."

"I don't really give a shit since I'll be taking you with me," Betsy gasped as her right hand tightened into a fist. All her remaining strength pooled down her arm as the psi-blade stuttered and coalesced into being.

The echoed words hung in the air, and suddenly two fingers were pointed directly at Pete's temple, glowing with a barely restrained blaze of solid light. For a moment, the tableau was paused in an odd Mexican standoff: hotknife, psychic blade, and laser all poised...

Pete's eyes narrowed. Betsy's stared sightlessly. And Death's blank gaze slowly cleared like clouds passing from in front of a blazing sun.

"I'm no one's puppet," Alison Blaire said, pivoting and loosing her laser, punching a hole directly through Apocalypse's shoulder.

Surprised and staggered, the dark-skinned mutant merely gaped at his Horseman-turned-assassin, his own blood running down his chest. "This... you would...? Ah, then. This is a doom come by my own hand." He turned slightly, shuffling towards the window to see a streak of light shoot into the sky, arcing above the Citadel.

Refixing his attention on the three mutants before him, he clenched a fist defiantly. "I would have given us the world! Our people, thrust into their rightful role - above that of humanity! You would have had it all, standing alongside me! And this... this is how it ends. Our new world. Not with a bang, but with--"

Whatever Apocalypse had been about to quote was cut off by the ceiling above them exploding with the force of a thousand cannonballs, a barely-visible flaming form crashing through the Citadel like a meteor, followed by the resounding echo of a sonic boom. The entire structure began to shake, and before their eyes, began crumbling from the top down.

Pete set Betsy down with a quick grin.

"It was too much to hope that we were going to get to walk out of here calmly, wasn't it? Al, are you-?"

He broke off, looking at Alison, who was swaying on her feet, and looking about her confused. "Whu---" she muttered, before falling sideways. Pete caught her, just before she hit the floor.

"Bets can you walk? More relevant, can you run?"

"No time for chivalry, luv." Betsy said with a flash of teeth. She rose slowly while favoring her left side. "'m good, go. I'll be right behind you."

Pete settled Alison across his shoulders in a fireman's carry. "Thank fuck she still eats like a pop star." he muttered, although it was lost against the sound of explosions and crashing masonry.

"Right" he said louder. "Let's get the fuck out of here. I didn't just spent two days listening to a genocidal fuckup just to get to get brained by a falling brick." And took off at a jog, eyes scanning the floor ahead for breaking surfaces and rubble. "And maybe if we're very fucking lucky, someone out there will have cigarettes."