xp_logs | The Magnificent Seven: Flanking Maneuvers (Reply)

The X-Men still in N'Jadaka find themselves in a difficult spot when some of the Trask-inspired invaders make their way to the outskirts of the capital and begin shelling the city. The decision to do what they can isn't without risks. 'Operation: Get Them Before They Get The King' continues, but not without complications. Elsewhere, Emma reaches her objective.

When a country was being invaded from both north and south, its military could be forgiven for focusing most of its attention on its borders. What troops could be spared were combing the area around Kanda, searching for the lone attacker who had destroyed the army base there.

N'Jadaka had developed as the capital of Wakanda for several reasons. That it was in the interior of the country, difficult to reach, was not the least significant of those reasons. The Wakandan military planners had never anticipated that a force could come anywhere near the capital, not without a complete collapse of the border forces. They had depended on their access to satellite feeds, purchased by a small but respectable portion of the profit from the vibranium trade, to warn them if that assumption was ever proven wrong.

But as much as certain subtly encouraged impulses were responsible for the invasion, there had also been a great deal of planning involved. The troops approaching N'Jadaka had slipped across the northern border in small groups, in advance of the main fighting, and had made their way south. Intelligence provided to them by certain foreign 'benefactors' allowed them to avoid the satellite coverage.

So when the first units arrived, setting up positions in the mountains above N'Jadaka, their presence came as an unwelcome surprise. When they began to shell the city, an already bad day for Wakanda became incalculably worse.

---

The running footsteps could be heard down the corridor, followed by the door opening. Jennie entered, sweaty and disheveled. Her clothes and hair were dusty, and there was a long smear of dirt along her cheek. She was wild-eyed and bloody-lipped. "So, they're attacking, in case you haven't noticed," she said, in-between trying to catch her breath. "The bridge on the south road out of town is out, by the way."

"We noticed the shelling," Domino said, not quite tartly. She was pulling on a bulletproof vest that looked a few sizes too big for her; unlike the X-Men, she hadn't brought her own body armor. One of the members of T'Challa's security detail was trying to push one on his king, who had a phone to his ear, listening.

Marius' eyes darted from Jennie to T'Challa and back again. "So," he said shortly, "stay or go. Which is it?" In his brain the promise of violence had created a fissure in the little wall he'd built around certain things he had not had been privileged to confront. Jay and Dani . . . The Australian's hands clenched and unclenched, his whole body straining towards 'let the answer be go'.

T'Challa hung up the phone. "Enemy troops have taken up a position in the mountains," he said brusquely, ignoring the vest still being shoved at him. "General Musyoka isn't certain who they are, or how they got this far in-country without being noticed. But that's the source of the shelling."

"They've got the higher ground?" Domino laughed, a brief, harsh sound. "Well, we're screwed until your people can get reinforcements here. Possibly even then."

"The army's beginning to move civilians out," T'Challa went on, and only then seemed to register Marius's question. "I can't leave," he said simply. The head of his security detail bit back a curse.

"So, are we going?" Alex asked curiously, mimicking Marius' actions, though his was more in preparation for using his powers then just anxiety. "I don't know about you dudes, but I"m ready to do some shelling of my own."

Several pairs of eyes turned to Jennie, and she blinked. Oh God, someone is going to get smacked for this, sure, leave me in charge. It was a testament to some sort of weird zen she'd hit that none of these emotions showed on her face. She shook her head to clear it. "Right, okay, here's what we're going to do. Alex, you and Zanne are with me. We're on offense. We're going see about keeping the guys in the tanks out of the city. Marius, I want you with His Majesty, do your best barnacle impersonation. And Dom, you stay with them. Capiche?"

"And all the people who could have convinced the bad guys that the city was the other way had to go off and find things to do elsewhere. I wonder how that happened," Domino muttered, then eyed the X-Men. "Bad thought. Frost said this whole thing was Trask's doing - what if she's still doing it? Actively influencing whoever's in command up there? You could be dealing with some fairly irrational people."

"Irrational and Trask are two words that are intimately connected," Zanne said dispassionately, her deep loathing of Trask barely concealed by her neutral tone. "I don't know that we can necessarily go any easier on them because they might be under the influence."

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Remember, we're X-Men, we don't have to kill to get our way," Jennie ran her hands through her hair, looking at the assembled mutants before her. In this moment, in the calm before the storm, she felt weirdly fond of all of them, and an icy stab of terror spread in her gut. I can't lose them. Not any of them. The twenty-year-old silently swore that she would get them all home alive, come hell or high water.

"Marius--" Jennie said quickly. Marius would be the one in the most danger, next to the king. And he was prone to almost dying, a lot. Maybe she was being paranoid, but he could whine at her later. "How are you on your stacking? You should take mine, just in case. And not just a lend. I want you to not have to worry about keeping it in reserve."

Marius blinked. "Eh? Well, Cable already gave us a lend, but -- ah, why not." His hand went to his jacket pocket, then was immediately followed by a hissed curse. "Bugger, could have sworn I'd -- anyone have a knife? Need somethin' to cut--"

A shell exploded nearby, rattling the house and causing flakes of plaster to rain down on the mutants. Jennie swore. "Fuck this, no time--" she touched a hand to her bloody lip, and without quite thinking, reached out and grabbed Marius by the ears, pulling his head towards her and kissed him hard, biting into his lower lip and drawing blood.

Even under normal circumstances there was something about being gripped by the ears while secured against feminine lips that did not lend itself to introspection. As mental blankness went, it was quite enjoyable. However, one date with Terry had been enough to convince him fellow mutants were not to his taste because, as it had turned out, there were some very unsettling ways in which they very much were. And so, bitten and already tasting blood, Marius' body eschewed the traditional male reactions and took it upon itself to champion an entirely different set of impulses and bit back. Hard.

Which made the ensuing slap that much more of a relief.

Watching Jennie and Marius out of the corner of his eye, Alex couldn't help a small grin despite the bleak situation in front of them. It was oddly sweet. Not thinking about green hair, he pointedly looked away and began warming up his hands with a mild red glow, prepping himself for the job ahead.

Zanne looked away from the little drama, making a mental note to ask Jennie about it once they'd shifted back the role of mere roommates once again. Outside, the sounds of the ongoing explosions was drawing near, causing the glass in the windows to rattle ominously. "I think we're starting to run out of time."

---

The attacks were coming in from all sides now, and the shelling had intensified. From Zanne's lookout spot she could see an oncoming wave of would-be invaders, opportunists who were taking advantage of the city's turmoil to try to stake a claim for themselves with the hopes that they would be one of the few still standing at the end. The lead caravan of vehicles was moving slowly over the incline, but would be within striking distance shortly. Zanne looked back over her shoulder at Jennie. "What now, fearless leader?"

Jennie did a double take at the name, and then shook her head and cracked her knuckles. "Well, we have a slight problem. We have to keep them out of the city, without it looking like there's mutants keeping them out of the city. Something about 'not causing an international incident,'" she used her fingers as quotes. "Which means, we hit them without being seen."

"Of course." Zanne nodded in acknowledgment, a small grin quirking her lips at Jennie's reaction. "We were never here." Staying under the radar made sense, although the extra admonition to stay invisible chafed somewhat. "But if we had been, would have any suggestions?"

"We don't get caught," Jennie said simply. "Have you run the hide and seek sequence in the DR yet?"

"Unfortunately not, although it sounds fairly self-explanatory." Or at least, Zanne hoped it was.

"Pretty much, we hide, we hit them, and they don't find us," Jennie passed a pair of binoculars to Zanne. "That knot over there seems to be the important group," the lights at the edge of her vision confirmed it, a knot of red swirled around them. "I can hit 'em from the distance-- how are you at distance fighting?"

"Not my strongest," Zanne admitted with a grimace, and brought binoculars up to her eyes. "I've got maybe a 70 foot range for freezes, and even that's somewhat dependent on what I'm trying to freeze." The group Jennie had pointed out were too far away for her to do anything about from her current position. She was going to have to go out and get pretty up close and personal with them to do any good.

"Right, up close it is," Jennie said grimly.

---

Even with Wakanda's wealth, and, more importantly, their thoughtful direction of that wealth to improving the infrastructure of the country, there was a ways yet to go in some areas. This particular road through the mountains, down to N'Jadaka, was not the major highway, and thus had not yet been 'improved'. It was narrow and twisting, and while the jeeps weren't having too much trouble getting down it, the trucks full of soldiers were. They were slowed to a crawl, out in the open.

Alex knew he really shouldn't be thinking that this was too easy, because that always led to trouble but come on? From his position farther up the mountain hidden by an outcropping of rocks, the caravan was like sitting ducks. It took everything he had to wait until they were in perfect position before he ducked out of his hiding place and shot two large bolts of energy into the road in front of the lead jeep. Then he destroyed the road behind as well, just in case, sending smaller bolts of energy around the scattering soldiers so they'd be too confused to respond properly. Seriously dude... he thought to himself, Way too easy.

As he was scrambling back up to his hiding place, the world proved him right. A blast of white energy slammed into the rock outcropping, sending fragments of razor-edged stone flying in all directions.

"Wow!" Alex exclaimed as he dived back to his cover, arms going up to protect his head as the stone fell around him. He bit his lip at the pain of his arms getting cut up by the stone, but the moment it was over, he was back on his feet and scanning the mountain top for his assailant.

Another blast hit the rock face, not too far away. Below, the convoy was backing up, not having much option than to reverse their path and see if they could skirt the gap on one side or the other. A few soldiers were firing upwards in Alex's general direction, but weren't showing any signs of actually intending to climb up to him; it was more like an attempt to lay down covering fire.

"I knew it..." Alex grumbled under his breath as he moved under cover again thanks to the soldiers cover fire. Going down wasn't an option anymore to get away from whoever had sent that energy blast, especially since he'd taken out a section of the road behind that caravan too. They were stuck until they figured a way around, which meant Alex's only option was up. Taking a deep breath and letting his hands glow, he broke cover and sent a few warning blasts down at the soldiers to discourage their cover fire as he scrambled to find a way up.

As he made his way up, a slender figure stepped out of cover and stood there, watching him. It wasn't until nearly the precise moment that Alex was close enough to recognize her that Amber Hunt attacked again, the blast carefully placed just in front of him on the rock - meant to mock, not to injure.

"You," she said in a clear voice that carried across the distance between them, "are new."

He wished he hadn't flinched but Alex didn't let it bother him as he faced her. His hands glowed red and the white indicator on the chest of his suit glowed bright from where it showen under his open uniform jacket. "That I am, wahine. Am I supposed to know who you are?" he asked with a small grin, using the distraction to get in the lay of the land.

"The bane of all adorable young energy-projectors everywhere," Amber said. She'd clearly been doing some heavy-duty energy-absorbing; it wasn't just the bright sunlight that made her blue eyes glow, and her skin seemed faintly luminescent. "That was a very cute stunt, with the road."

"Thanks, but flattery won't get you anywhere." Alex replied as he finally sized her up. He noticed the glow and he knew the shot had come from her. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some more soldiers to stop. If you'll just come along quietly." He sent a warning shot at her feet, figuring he'd give the peaceful way a shot first.

Amber barely stumbled. She straightened again, smiling at him almost kindly. The glow to her skin had only grown more noticeable, and her eyes were almost incandescent. "New," she said again, "and kind of dumb." Both her hands came up and white light exploded outwards at Alex, smashing into his chest.

Alex went flying back into a wall of rock. He winced, coughing slightly to catch his breath as his mind raced. An energy absorber. Of course. I had to say it was too easy... "Hey now, don't let the hair fool you too." He quipped as he stood up. Glancing up, he shot at a rocky outcropping above her, sending a shower of rocks down to give him time to regroup.

"No blonde jokes here, pumpkin," Amber said, once she'd regained her footing. The rocks had hit her, but she was smiling, an almost conspiratorial grin. "And you know, feel free to keep throwing whatever at me. It's fun. The kinetic impact may leave a bruise, but it's still good for a charge."

Alex was unable to hide a small grown as he rolled his eyes. Why did he always end up with the energy absorbers? Was his power a homing beacon to them? Pushing those thought aside, his brain began to race. So he couldn't use his powers because she'd just absorb them. Of course, there was a chance she would take too much, like how he and Shiro had defeated Pele, but did he want to risk it? Pele had been using his powers after all, not her own like this chick was. "You're certainly multi-talented there aren't you, dudette?" he quipped as his brain raced. Hand to hand? Could he get close enough?

"And what does that make you? Have the X-Men actually stooped to cannon fodder, now?" Amber raised a hand, white light dancing back and forth between her fingers as she eyed him. "Don't suppose I could convince you to back off? This could get awfully tedious - for me. You blast me, I blast you. Only one of us is immune."

Whatever she saw in Alex's face seemed to answer her question. "My. You really have drunk the koolaid, haven't you?" She shrugged, actually looking regretful. "Ah, well."

Alex had just give her his best surfer dude smile in response to backing off. Let her take from that what she would, because he had no plans to back off anytime soon. "You may be immune but I'm too used to being the cannon rather then just fodder to back off now. And it was good kool aid too, strawberry, my favorite."

Amber flipped her hands towards him, almost dismissively, as if tossing something up into the air. The blast of power that resulted wasn't quite what the gesture had suggested.

He ducked and rolled out of the way of the blast, wincing as it caught his foot and resisted the urge to throw some power back. Come on, Summers... He thought to himself as he moved back to standing position, blasting some rocks behind her as a distraction to give him more time. Think!

"Witty banter's the last refuge of the man who knows he's going to lose, and lose hard," was Amber's retort. She straightened, bleeding from where some of the rock shrapnel had cut her face. Her gaze raked over their surroundings, and she let off four quick, carefully targeted blasts at the rock face beside Alex.

His brain raced with options as he dodge out of the way, using his powers to try and fend off the worst of the rocks before they hit him, while not giving her too much power. It was when he limped on his burned foot that his brain began an intriguing train of thought. He couldn't burn her with his powers or knock her unconscious with a rock before she shot it down. Both of their powers burned, just like a fire (he was concentrating so hard that the thought of burns and green hair only caused a momentarily slight twitch). Fire burned rock, air... It was like a lightbulb went off in his brain!

Alex set himself into a steady stance once he'd stopped dodging, both hands out and already glowing. "I don't know about losing but I'd take a deep breath if I were you, sheila." His power erupted from his hands, creating a triangle around Amber, the closest rock face closing in the two sides made from the large streams of energy pouring from his hands. He moved quickly, taking steps forward to make the space smaller, his goal to burn all the oxygen in the small space before she could figure him out and use his powers against him - because then he was a goner.

He never thought his long hours in the ocean surfing would come in handy, but he had an easy time holding his breath for as long as it took.

It was quite devastatingly effective. The blast burned her clothing, if not her skin, and while she absorbed the energy, Amber still had perfectly ordinary lungs. Still needed to breathe. And as Alex created his trap, that was no longer an option. When the air cleared, she was lying prone on the rock, quite unconscious.

Below, some of the soldiers were showing a remarkable lack of preservation and climbing upwards towards Alex and Amber, firing in their direction. By the time they'd gotten close enough to pose a real threat, however, Alex was gone.

---

They had chosen to stay in the guest house, in the end; it made the most sense, given that T'Challa was unwilling to leave the city until the evacuation was farther along. Movement meant exposure, and at least the house was in a fairly defensible spot. Domino twitched the curtains aside, eyeing the smoke rising above the city.

"Fires," she said flatly. "I suppose that was inevitable."

"I was under the impression it was a signature of the X-Men. If nothing's on fire, you simply aren't trying." Marius winced a little. As always, along with Jennie's powers came her ability to perceive lines of probability, like afterimages out of the corner of the eye --and at the moment the view outside seemed to be an undifferentiated stain of red. When combined with the unpleasant rush of adrenaline from unorthodox donation, Marius actually found himself missing the days he could literally claw his own skin off.

"Are you all right?" The question, surprisingly enough, came from T'Challa, who was gazing at Marius as if the excuse to focus some concern on someone actually right to hand was the best thing ever.

"Merely spoilin' for a fight." Marius licked his swollen lower lip, then glanced at T'Challa. "Er. My apologies. Of course it would be best were it not to come to that. It's just I'm the sort who, once events have reached a certain intensity, prefers to see them through to completion." He paused, considering. "Granted, under more personal circumstances this is considered a virtue."

"And Nate says I have an inappropriate sense of humor," Domino said, not moving away from the window. She was clearly making the bodyguards nervous. "I don't see the vehicles yet," she said. A few members of the security detail had left to get better vehicles for a quick egress, if, or rather when, that became necessary. One of the bodyguards lifted his radio, placing a call. No response came, and the man frowned.

"I personally blame Nature. Among other structural defects, she failed to install the standard mental/verbal filter." A subtle change in the woman's body language twigged something in Marius' gut. He pushed away from the wall and cocked his head. "Somethin' on there?"

"I just don't see the vehicles. And I should, by now..." Domino leaned a little closer to the window, her eyes narrowing.

What happened next, happened very fast. There was the crack of glass shattering, and then Domino was spinning away from the window, a pained curse escaping her as she hit the ground. Two of T'Challa's bodyguards managed the rather impressive task of knocking their protectee out of his chair and to the floor.

"Oi, Domino!" When the window shattered Marius had hit the floor; now he scrambled towards the fallen woman. "Where'd they get you?" he yelled over a sudden burst of gunfire from outside, trying to assess whilst keeping out of the sniper's eyeline. Domino was on her back, but he didn't see any blood. Nor, he realized, had he heard a corresponding shot.

"Son of a-" She was tugging at the scorched front of her shirt, revealing equally blackened kevlar beneath. "Motherfucking fucker -God DAMN it!" She rolled over to her hands and knees, teeth gritted. "Go! Away from the windows!" T'Challa's bodyguards were already pulling him towards the hall.

"Wait, let me--" Marius thrust his head up just high enough to peer out the windowframe. He hissed. "Bloody hell, it's long-rangers out there -- three flavours of energy projectors and a telekinetic, and that's just what I can--"

"T'Challa's getting too far ahead of us," Domino grated, crawling towards the door.

Marius ducked down to follow her. "I'm here for threat-assessment, I'm assessin'. Good news is, I'm not seein' anything out there I can't block with more'n a bit of scorching--"

Down the hall there was the sharp, unmistakable sound of a wall ceasing to exist in roughly the direction of T'Challa and his bodyguards.

". . . unless it's happenin' in a different room," Marius finished.

---

Crouched behind a low mudbrick wall, Jennie peered around the corner at the oncoming vehicles. Pulling strings without her disks was tricky, a bit like using a baseball bat instead of a scalpel, but as long as she could keep the lights from her hands hidden she could do this. Tongue stuck between her teeth in concentration, Jennie grabbed a handful of lines and pulled.

And the tires on several of the jeeps exploded.

Zanne crept along a rocky ledge, high and narrow, but well hidden from view and drew to a stop some 40 feet above a road leading up into the capitol. A truck filled with troops rumbled up the pass, evidently unaware of the disabled jeeps ahead of it. Zanne reached out, gauging the distance carefully and set a wide freeze.

The truck jerked and metal started to squeal as the the back half of the truck halted, its front still moving forward, propelled by the generous rush of gasoline that flooded the engine the driver gunned it over the crest of the hill. A frightened roar went up from the soldiers riding inside and they began to fling themselves out of the back as it ignited and bust into flame.

The lines shimmered and changed, and Jennie nudged them along. The frightened soldiers caused the tank behind them to veer sharply into the ditch to avoid hitting them, where the ancient vehicle's engine coughed and died.

The pileup of vehicles had successfully managed to stop the upward progression of troops, but the side effect was that they were now pouring into the road, heads turning every which way as they tried to discern the case of their misfortunes. Zanne stepped backward, trying to shrink into the shadows. The movement attracted the attention of the men below, and a spray of bullets hit the rock wall above her, spraying broken fragments over her.

Jennie cursed under her breath and looked around sharply for a good distraction. Eyes narrowed, she saw a cluster of red in the tree line. One swift tug and an ancient tree fell to the earth, the ear-splitting crack sounding as loud as a gunshot.

Zanne took advantage of the distraction to scramble out of range. The left side of her face ached where a particularly large stone had slammed into it. "That had better not scar..." she murmured, before kicking out a weak part of the ledge, treating those below her to the same cascade of rocks and dirt.

There was enough confusion for this cluster of soldiers. Jennie ducked away from the wall, catching Zanne's attention as she signaled for them to move down the road, towards the next cluster of soldiers. She didn't know how long they would be able to keep this up, there were a lot of them and only two of her and Zanne. But the fewer soldiers that made it to the capital, the better.

---

Domino produced a gun from - somewhere, and was on her feet by the time she got to the door, running. She fired through the hole in the wall, ignoring the one unconscious and one clearly dead bodyguard. "Marius! Get T'Challa out the back! Watch they don't circle around!" There was other gunfire outside; the rest of the security detail.

"At some point I shall determine the exact moment my life began to be run by tiny women," Marius muttered, shoving himself to his feet and towards T'Challa. The king was already climbing to his feet, and Marius gave him no chance to get comfortable. He grabbed T'Challa by the elbow, blessed the fact the massive man was off-balance enough that the effort hadn't simply bounced off, and marched him down the hall without even breaking stride.

"Apologies, your Majesty," Marius said, thinking how odd it was the sound of gunfire could be so comforting when you knew it was coming from someone on your side, "but higher authorities have deemed it prudent to evacuate. Survival, for instance."

"Nathan was right," T'Challa growled under his breath as they paused just inside the doorway to check their path out, as Domino had cautioned. "He knew exactly what sort of mutants they'd send."

Outside, there was an appalling-sounding scream, and one of T'Challa's bodyguards ran by, a human torch so wrapped in fire that it was obvious there was nothing to be done for him. Another energy blast smashed into the single, unarmored jeep that the king's security detail had deemed inappropriate transportation, given the circumstances. The force of the blast flipped the vehicle over, and it slid nearly twenty feet with a screech of tortured metal before the gas tank blew up.

"Right," Marius said in a voice that sounded distant even to him against the burning man's screams, "perhaps not this way--"

Red flared in the corner of his eye, and Marius didn't waste any time on analysis. He yanked T'Challa back just as half the destroyed jeep came hurtling towards them -- and abruptly rocketed back in the direction it had come like a tennis ball rebounding off a wall.

Marius heard the impact of metal and gave a mirthless grin. Due to personal preference he rarely borrowed psionics, and as such was somewhat lacking in fine control. He wouldn't be telekinetically picking locks anytime soon, but under the circumstances he was sure he could find some use for short, random bursts of violence.

"We appear to be pinned down," T'Challa rumbled, eyes narrowed as he eyed what they could see of the perimeter. "Not a good thing."

Another burst of profanity announced Domino's arrival, and she half-fell to a crouch beside Marius and T'Challa, looking thoroughly pissed at the world. "Motherfucking cock-up," she snarled. "What the fucking hell happened to our fucking cavalry?" Her eyes locked on Marius. "You said Nate loaned you his powers? Can you manage a TK shield?"

"Er, potentially. Thing is I don't so much have practice here, which lands this power firmly in the category of 'findin' out as I go'--"

A few meters away an amber beam of energy sliced through a wall, followed almost immediately by a body almost invisible in the cloud of dust. Marius flung an amorphous blob of energy at the knot of lines immediately above it. It lacked the cohesion of Jennie's discs, but the building's structural integrity proved its lack of concern for polish and allowed the ceiling to answer the wall's abuse with an unceremonious drop on the attacker.

Marius looked at the upper floor, half-broken, half peeled away from the wall like a page. The very edge touched the floor -- a scarce two feet from Domino.

"Fall back?" he suggested.

"Good start, but we can't tear the house down around us!" Domino said, firing off another few shots. "Kind of makes the position not so defensible, if you know what I mean-" She paused to reload, her eyes flickering down the hill, towards the road. "They came by vehicle. I say we go swipe it."

"Sure -- though I would suggest pickin' off a few first, as, absorbent though I am, I doubt I'd do much good protectin' His Majesty from the half-dozen or so energy projectors out there even were he to wear me like a raincoat." Marius nodded at T'Challa briefly. "In a respectful manner, that is."

"That's quite a distance in the open," T'Challa said grimly. "But you're both right - we can't stay here."

"I've done something like this before," Domino said. She half-rose, scuttling down the hall rapidly and retrieving the gun belonging to the dead bodyguard. "Let me go out first," she said. "Chances are good they won't hit me. Marius, you follow - shield T'Challa as much as you can, pick off anyone I draw out."

"Fair enough. Ah, one more thing." Marius closed his eyes and held out a hand. A globe of white formed in his palm, less erratic than the red now that he had time to concentrate. He tossed it to T'Challa. The man's reflexes took over, moving him to attempt a catch, but the globe disappeared when it touched his hand, briefly suffusing the king with white.

The Australian nodded. "Good luck. To ensure that which misses her is equally considerate of you."

The gunfire was dying down, Domino realized, her expression tightening. "Okay then," she muttered under her breath, checking both guns and trying to let herself sink into that semi-trance state that always seemed to make her luck work a little better in crisis situations. "Stay close, but not too close," she said almost absently, and was on her feet and running in the next moment, firing as she went.

Watching her, Marius reflected that it was probably much easier to wade into a firefight guns blazing if your power tended to manifest along the lines of "guaranteed not to inccur lethal headshot". Ah, well.

Marius darted after her, T'Challa close behind. The air was dry and sharp, like the aftermath of an electrical short. A blast caught him a stinging blow to the back, intense enough to melt through part of his uniform and sear the flesh below. Marius whirled, and realized belatedly his instinctive hurl of red was skittering with the yellow-green plasma he'd just absorbed. Before he could wonder what the hell that would do the energy-projector tried to meet it with fire of his own.

The Australian knew of no way to process the collision as anything other than "for a second everything tasted orange". The attacker was barely even fazed, and for a split-second Marius thought nothing had happened -- until the man's second volley collapsed into thready ropes of burning yellow-green. A look almost like bafflement crossed the man's dirt-smeared face as he lifted the hand still wrapped in clinging energy, which he continued to wear right until Marius' telekinetic push flung him into a wall twenty-five feet away.

Now it was T'Challa pulling Marius along, allowing him no time to linger at the scene, and the king almost lost his head for the trouble when a barely-visible streak of red flickered out of nowhere. The man's reflexes saved him, limiting the damage to a gash along the side of his scalp. The lightning-quick followup took Marius across the shoulder, biting through his sleeve and the surface of his skin like a razor-wire whip before his body could fully absorb it.

"Run!" Marius yelled, shoving T'Challa away. He cast about desperately for the direction of the attack and saw a flicker from a two-story house across the street. There, in the window -- a sniper position, and those barely-visible streaks of red were coming again, so Marius did what Jennie had instructed him to do when he was out of time, which was find the biggest knot of red he could and pull -- and so he did, not really paying attention with whether he was reaching with telekinesis or probability to assault the worm-riddled wood beneath the sniper and collapse the entire side of the house--

Which, instead, went insane. One window rocketed skyward while a section of roof shot off horizontally to bury itself in the roof next door. The floor supporting to assassin collapsed, as did half the wall, but fully a fifth of the debris went up instead of down -- and stuck.

Marius stared. Among the planks and section of pipe he could make out half a chair and what looked like a bedside table, and as the rest of the house caved in around them they did not appear to be coming down anytime soon. As Marius took in the detritus hanging in midair like a constellation of urban destruction, the obvious question forced found his lips.

"What the f--"

Domino, who had been managing covering fire at best - these kids, if these were the Taygetos kids had the sense, most of them, to stay back and take advantage of their range - felt something very wrong, something that tore at that nearly subconscious awareness of the variables in this situation and left her dizzied, disoriented for one critical moment. She forgot training and years of experience for long enough to stop, half-turning back towards Marius, and in the same instant something smashed into her leg, knocking her down. All she was aware of as she hit the ground was blinding pain.

Before either Marius or T'Challa could react, a blur of motion came at them both - and targeted the X-Man, instead of the king. As the blur slammed into Marius, it resolved into a girl of no more than fifteen, thin and wiry, her dark hair shaven close to her scalp. High-speed punches came at Marius, crackling with some sort of concussive force.

His body could absorb some of the energy driving her fists, but it did nothing to reduce the force of their impact. Though Marius managed to twist onto his back, the moment he did so the girl was straddling his chest, pinning his arms to his sides with her knees -- the power-position, Marius recalled dimly, where you had your opponent helpless. He tried to muster some kind of retaliation, but any thoughts of potential strategy were obliterated by his first good look at his assailant's face. Despite the briefing on Taygetos somehow the age of the operatives had failed to register with him, and once they'd engaged their combination of distance and professionalism had completely banished the fact from his mind. Even as she pulled back her fist for a punch he knew would cave in his skull, all Marius could do was stare at the terrible blankness in her eyes and realize he knew that look -- but from the other side.

Before the punch could connect, T'Challa was there behind the girl, hauling her off Marius and pulling her away. The girl writhed, energy crackling around her form, but she couldn't get a grip on T'Challa, who got her in a very effective chokehold. She went limp, but as the king let go of her, letting her slide to the ground, there was a flash of light, and T'Challa himself was crumpling, his clothes smouldering.

The scene seemed to come to Marius in fragments. An empty-eyed teenaged boy walking towards them, white energy cascading from his hands. The eye-catching movement of Domino behind him, white-faced and prone, leveling her gun. The lines of probability twisting around her as she turned all her focus on the shot. The implacable approach of the plasma-thrower behind her, one arm hanging limp and half his face spattered with blood and dirt. The plasma dripping from his fingertips, still heavy but beginning to recover some of its spark. Marius could see now he was even younger than the girl had been.

He didn't want to hurt these kids anymore; his heart had gone out of the violence. Psionics, probability alteration, and Domino's reality-warping by proximity -- his tools. In his hand a ball of good luck flickered to life. Because he didn't know what to do, he did what he always did: follow his instincts, and trust it would be the right thing.

"My strength is as the strength of ten," Marius murmured, pressing the energy into his own chest, "because my heart is pure."

As Domino squeezed the trigger Marius struck at the energy projector -- right at the knot of red in the boy's mind.

He would never love telepathy. Even all the private sessions with Xavier could not eliminate the invasiveness, the almost obscene intimacy of the contact. But in that split-second of contact with the assassin he knew, with absolute certainty, that this was the right thing to do. Luck and reality bending for him in tandem, Marius reached into that smooth, blank expanse that was the mind of the Taygetos agent, and tore.

---

After a few hours traveling south from N'Jadaka, the terrain began to change, mountains turning into gently rolling hills. The area was not precisely forested, but it possessed enough in the way of tree cover to offer some shelter, or at least shade.

Tara Trask was taking full advantage of the latter. She was seated cross-legged on a blanket, eyes closed and expression composed. Her mind was most definitely elsewhere - literally, in this case. 'Pushing' even one target, let alone several, from this distance was not easy, even with the uproar of the astral plane facilitating things.

"Does it ever get annoying?" Emma asked, enjoying the startled look on Trask's face as she was torn from the Astral Plane by surprise. "Being wrong about absolutely everything you've ever done?" Emma walked forward from the shade of the tree where she had been watching the woman going about her nefarious business, her body rippling to diamond and back again.

The startlement faded, turning into an assessing look, laced with a sort of fascination as Trask watched Emma's body shift back and forth. "I'd expected Nathan," she said after a moment, "but I imagine he went after Ilyas. I do hope things don't get out of hand this time."

Emma shrugged. "With you pushing whatever perverted little barrow you've chosen as your latest crusade, things are almost guaranteed to get out of hand. You carry chaos around with you, Trask. Probably because your mind is such a mess." Emma reached out with her power and tapped Trask's shields, hard. For a telepath, it was the equivalent of a ringing slap to the face.

It clearly staggered Trask - she nearly toppled out of her cross-legged position, barely catching herself with an outflung hand -and yet she was smiling, too. "Carrying chaos," she said, sounding slightly breathless, yet almost intrigued. As if Emma had just paid her a compliment so sophisticated that she was still turning it over in her mind, appreciating all the angles. "A forest fire is chaotic," she finally said, almost thoughtfully. "That doesn't make it any less necessary."

"Tell that to everything that dies," replied Emma. "They'd probably accuse you of sophistry." Emma kept moving, circling around Trask but gradually drawing the circle tighter. She also kept shifting between diamond and flesh; anything to make her difficult to focus on while she evaluated Trask's strength. All the while she hoped that T'Challa's bodyguards were doing an effective job on Trask's little contingent of men. "I think your academic history is the problem, Tara. You've become so used to analysing history through your own perspective that you've forgotten that the world rushes on without you. Do you really think all your little plots and plans make any difference to the great sweep of the world? All you do is make people bleed and die. History just closes over that little wound and moves onwards."

"I've seen history, Emma," Trask said, almost tranquilly. She was watching Emma, making no aggressive moves either physically - or mentally, surprisingly enough. "Seen it in a way you can't even imagine, even before I encountered her." She didn't speak Askani's name, but the meaning was clear. "Some threads in the tapestry are more significant than others. Yank them out, and the picture changes. A dead king, for example. Other threads can be... redirected." Her smile was almost pitying. "Take your Black King. I honestly think that all he saw in my plan was the chance to open up the vibranium market."

"Sebastian," said Emma, not bothering to hide her contempt, "is more than a little blinded by his company's rather pressing need for cash reserves." There was something wrong here, Emma knew. Trask should be attempting something, anything to escape. The fact that she wasn't meant there had to be a trap somewhere. "But he does at least have the good sense to know that history is only made by those who survive."

Emma ceased moving as she reached out with her power, slapped again at Trask's shields. There was more purpose to the blow this time; it wasn't an assault designed to test the strength of Trask's shields but a serious attempt to breach them. Trask had too many contingency plans, too many allies; Emma needed that information more than she needed the simple satisfaction of tearing out Trask's throat with diamond fingernails.

Trask rocked where she sat, but kept smiling, even as she stumbled back to her feet. To Emma's telepathic perceptions, her astral self shifted just out of synch, as if sliding away from Emma's attack. Her shields didn't so much block the attack as scatter it, or at least part of it, blunting the impact. Yet there were cracks there, quite obviously.

"History is something to be put to use, too," she said. "You can tell Nathan, when you see him again, that it's Shaw that wants to use the Taygetos children. Not me. I only want them because I know he'll come to me, if I have them. He can't not." Trask's fond little smile wasn't directed at Emma; the look in her eyes had gone distant, wistful. "He'll come to me, and give me everything I want, and then maybe I'll let them go. Tell him that. It's time there was clarity between us."

"And people tell me I'm sexually perverted," breathed Emma. She pulled back into her own head for a moment, knowing that she couldn't follow Trask's mind through time, if that's where the woman chose to go. Trask, clearly, had to be anchored in this reality. She couldn't turn to diamond and use her telepathy at the same time, but Emma knew her well-honed hand-to-hand skills would be more than enough. Trask barely even moved as Emma's hand circled her throat, gripping hard. "Stay here. Stay now," said Emma brutally and threw her mind back at Trask's shields, battering against the cracks.

The diamond sheen had been beautiful, perfect in its form as it was in its defense of the Frost woman's mind and just as ruthless a reflection of the owner as the powers she now brought to bear on Trask's shields. In the trees, hidden from view, shielded on the astral plane by the white noise of a country at war folded around her like a blanket, Carly Alvarez waited, hands in her pockets, her own shields still and unobtrusive. She had time for study and none for mistakes.

Carly gathered herself forming an attack thin and sharps as a stilletto. She sought not to kill--that was beyond her no matter what the case--but merely to stun, long enough to get Trask away. Frost had to be entirely absorbed. So Carly ignored the choking sounds, refused to see the way Trask's face reddened. The shields were the key--hers, Frost's, Trask's. As Trask's shields began to crack, Carly dropped her own and struck out hard.

It felt like being hit in the back of the head with a hammer. It was the only way Emma could describe it and she knew that Trask's trap had been sprung. For a second, she held on through the pain, reaching out blindly for the new mind that had attacked hers, catching at images, memories: a face in a mirror, a raised voice, a telepathy lesson. One word sprang out immediately. Mistra. The girl had been trained by Mistra. Trained well, obviously, because Emma could hold out the pain no longer. She tried desperately one last time, reaching towards the cracks in Trask's shields, trying to break into her mind, but the effort was too much and Emma sank to her knees, switching to diamond form and the glorious release from the telepathic needles that had run through her brain.

Release from the effects of the girl's power was not release from pain, however, and Emma could only hold her head as events moved on around her.

When her attack became abruptly useless and the two women fell away from each other, Carly sprinted for Trask. Despite the height difference, Carly had little trouble hauling her to her feet, sacrificing dignity for efficiency. Not a single glance was spared for the diamond cold woman clutching her head mere feet away. Attack would be worthless, hesitation would be deadly. Carly's mission was simple--get Trask out.

"Very timely, Carly," Trask said, her voice hoarse but her smile back, and still eerily tranquil. She patted Carly's arm as the younger woman led her towards the vehicle concealed behind a stand of trees. "That... should keep her out of N'Jadaka while events work themselves out." She glanced back over her shoulder at the prone Emma, a flash of something close to spite in her eyes. "Chaos can have its own order, White Queen."