Shiva - No Place To Hide
Jan. 30th, 2009 11:15 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsJohn Wraith makes his final strike to eliminate Maverick - but finds something completely different than he anticipated.
John Wraith had spent years training to be one of the best special ops soldiers in the world. He'd learned from the best. He could slip into the most protected compound and slaughter everyone inside before any of his victims would even know they were dead. Nothing and no one was safe from him once he'd acquired his target. The few people alive who even knew his name knew that and rightfully lived in fear that should he so desire, he would come after them.
So when Maverick wandered into the ghetto of Spanish Harlem alone and unprotected, Wraith was mildly perturbed. Either his former partner had grown into a complete idiot or he was planning something. Wraith shadowed his target down a sparse 100th Street, his mind cloaked from passersby. If this was a trap, then he would be the one to spring it, not Maverick.
The problem with pulling off a believable mimic of an actual person was studying them. Morgan hadn't had enough time to study David for her liking. Short notice could do that. She managed to get his walk down and the important physical ticks that would identify him as himself and acting normally to just about anyone who knew him. She hadn't gotten more than that, though, so if she had to open her mouth it was going to be mostly downhill. It wasn't that she didn't have his voice, it was that she hadn't gotten his manner of speaking down. With any luck the ambush would spring before she had to speak to the target. He knew David too well, she was sure, to be fooled by her for long. Then again, all she needed was for him to be fooled long enough.
"David" walked through the streets, alone and unprotected but not necessarily at ease. Morgan made sure he looked like he was on guard. His eyes moved constantly, he didn't walk in a straight line so as to make it harder to take his feet out from under him, and there was an air about him of a man who could reach for his weapon at any moment. Too bad precognition was such a bitch, Morgan would have loved a little heads-up about when she was going to get pounced on.
Spanish Harlem. Marie-Ange would've stuck out like a sore thumb, all long legs and red hair and expensive clothes. If she'd been outside instead of in the back of a rented SUV with one of the ruggedized laptops watching Morgan-as-David from the discreet camera disguised as a New York Jets antenna ball. Waiting patiently was harder than it looked, even with giving regular reports to her teammates, it was tedious.
"Sightlines are clear. Copycat, in two minutes, I want you to stop walking. Look into a store window or something. Let's see who pauses." Remy was sitting comfortably on a bench waiting for a bus while he talked on his cell phone. Except the phone went right into the comms they had in their ears. Identifying someone on a busy street was difficult if you knew them on sight. On description only and with the man attempting to keep himself anonymous, it was even more difficult.
Which is why they wouldn't bother trying to identify the face, but instead, to identify the reactions. Wraith would be watching, checking to make sure the area was clear before moving in. He'd had to track Morgan in her disguise, and his movements would eventually break the normal flow of the sidewalk traffic. He's sent Jubilee up into the roofs, watching and sending a birds-eye view through a portable video camera down to Marie-Ange's position.
"Bishop, anything on you end?"
"Nothing out of place yet." He spoke into a coffee cup, his eyes tracing over the window of the cafe in front of him, using the reflection for his surveillance. "Not even a repeat passer by." It was unlikely that they would be looking for a vehicle. One missing its driver suddenly would really stand out. Despite that, Bishop kept his eyes on all the traffic.
Jubilee trained the video camera slightly behind Morgan, panning from left to right and pausing on things and people she thought might be of interest. After a few moments, she flipped the small video camera closed, tucked it into a bag along her back, then took off over the roofs again. It wasn't difficult, not after all this time training with both the thieves guild, and Remy himself. She jumped gaps and scrambled up roof edges, her eyes always on Morgan as the shapeshifter walked the street below.
"Nothing I can see yet." Jubilee said, finally coming to rest a few yards in front of where Morgan walked, flipping the camera out of the bag again and setting it up. "Video incoming, Tarot."
Wraith sat down at a bus stop across the street from Maverick and carefully studied him. He was on edge, for sure, and looked like he was on his way to meet someone, which meant Wraith had to do the job quickly. Maverick's death would be an easy one, but adding another former "colleague" would be an unnecessary complication. "Such a nice day, isn't it?" he said quietly to the young woman reading a magazine next to him, and she looked up in confusion, unable to see the speaker. He flashed her his pearly smile and teleported away to continue his tracking.
It only took a few moments for the video to stream from Jubilee's camera to Marie-Ange's laptop, and she watched it in stutter-steps, fast forwarding to catch movement and pausing when something caught her eye. A populated bus stop, and a black man who wormed his way between people like they could not see him. It wasn't the indifference of a normal New York City crowd, even with the typical 'this is my space, you move around me' attitude, people didn't stand that still when someone was moving around them. "Bus stop! Gambit, how many people are at the bus stop across from your location? I have six on the video."
"Dere's five-- wait." Remy shot a glance over to the opposite side of the street, and then closed his eyes for a second. No one had ever figured out exactly how LeBeau's spatial sense worked. It wasn't like a radar, but at the same time, he was able to pick up on things he couldn't see properly, leaving it obvious that it wasn't completely visually based. The crowd was just at the fringes, but it didn't feel right. Gambit opened his eyes again.
"Dat's got to be him. Dere's someone moving in dat crowd I can't see." He got up and walked over to the cluster of newspaper boxes, changing his own sightlines. "Copycat, start moving towards de cul-de-sac. Tarot, keep Jubilee on him. When he gets away from de crowd, mark him for Bishop. You got de first shot, homme."
While they had been spotting the tail, the David that was bait had been pretending to browse the books in a window display. Moving on casually, he filtered back into the crowd. Morgan slumped his shoulders a bit to mirror those around her who were huddled against the cold wind. She wove through the moving crowd easily, both blending in and making her way to their ambush point. The down side, of course, was that if Bishop didn't pull the trigger fast enough the only ambush would be on her.
Cul-de-sac was an awfully posh term for a dead end street, which was much more fitting for the one Morgan was strolling down in David's body. The tall buildings on each side provided enough shade for dodgy business dealings, ambushes and assassinations alike. David paused at the end and turned so his back was agains the wall and he could look down to his left to watch people walk past on the main street, or see someone enter to come toward him. Morgan simply waited patiently.
Wraith smirked. Maverick looked like some confused downtowner looking to score some rock. If he just let the other man stay for a while, he wouldn't have been surprised if a dealer did approach him. Or, he considered, someone who would make his own job more difficult. Wraith quickly doubled back to the bus stop and ghosted up and down the street, looking to make sure that no one was following the target. Satisfied that there was no immediate backup, Wraith sidled up next to Maverick and a wicked-looking knife seemingly appeared out of nowhere into his grasp.
"Contact. Wraith has made contact with Copycat." Marie-Ange sounded calmer than she felt as she reported the location through her comm. Maneuvering the laptop so it did not close as she climbed into the front passenger seat of the SUV was annoying, but it was better than being in the back, and she might need to take over driving from Bishop in a hurry. "Jubilee, keep the camera on them until we have a confirmed... merde, there is no confirming visuals with this one, find a place to put that camera where it will not move!"
"I'm on it, Tarot. Getting to a better position now." Jubilee noted, before flipping her celphone closed, then jumping from the position she was currently inhabiting to the fire escape below. She needed to get closer to ground level to give the others a good line of sight without letting Wraith know she was around.
Luckily, she looked like any other New Yorker, rugged up for the cold weather, and just trying to find a quicker way home. She swung across the space in between buildings and then hit the pavement, dashing across the road to the entrance of the cul-de-sac before taking a jump from a nearby fire hydriant and catching at the roof of a bu stop to give herself a platform up to the higher levels.
People would be watching her, obviously, but most of them would just see a free running enthusiast.
"Okay, I'm there. Not many places to stick this thing, I'm just going to have to hold onto it." she noted in a quiet murmur.
"Copycat, I'm closing." Remy was just getting bits off the man, more like a hole in his senses, that effected everything around it. It was essentially using the background to target a blank, hardly his most optimal situation, but the one they were left with. He tucked his cellphone in his pocket, just shading behind Morgan.
"Now!" Remy suddenly darted forward, his hands coming out of his pockets with two ziplock bags glowing purple. At the sound, they moved just like they had rehearsed, Morgan closing her eyes and pulling the scarf up over her face. Both bags exploded from the charged kinetic energy, and Wraith was hit with a cloud of particles. They used to call it 'devil's brew' in the agency; just a mix of iron filings, black pepper, capsicum soaked cotton bags that vaporized on explosion into a non-aerosol substitute for tear gas, and their own little twist, a phosphoresent dye power similar to those slipped into anti-robbery packs. That noxious cloud was pushed forward from the charge from Remy's powers, and enveloped Wraith.
Morgan was mostly hoping that knife didn't end up sheathed inside of her while her eyes were closed. She was counting down silently, waiting until it would be safe enough to open her eyes again. As she did so she stepped sideways away from Wraith and his shiny friend. To be honest, if she had that knife in her hand there wouldn't have been much wait before she'd buried it up to its handle in someone's stomach. She tended to be impatient, though. Her eyes opened cautiously when she'd finished counting down, her favorite handgun already comfortably in her grasp.
"I see you." David's voice sounded more amused than Morgan could imagine the actual man ever sounding. She trained her sights on the man covered in dye and dust. She wasn't expecting to get a shot off, she just wanted to see how far he could run. There were enough of them nearby, she didn't need to be the one to take him down. If he tried to stick his knife in her, though, she might.
He'd been tricked! Whoever these people were, they were good. Wraith swore at himself silently as he slipped away from the impostor and the intruder, frantically rubbing his eyes to clear his sight. He disappeared again, teleporting up a few feet onto a fire escape, and then again across the alley onto a higher level. He had a couple of options: fight or flight. While regrouping at this point might be strategically sound, they would only make his job harder. And for all intents and purposes, they were the enemy now, too. There was no doubt that this was kill or be killed. When his vision was clear enough to see where he was going again, Wraith slipped down and attacked the man who'd blinded him with an inhumanly fast jab to the neck.
The jab caught the Cajun high on the shoulder muscle, as he'd already been moving with the strike. The man was literally dripping with the dye, and now what had been a blank in Remy's senses as now a clearly defined form, nand his brain poured information to his reflexes. Gambit caught the followup blow at the wrist, twisting and slamming a hand into his solar plexus. As he staggered, Remy kicked downwards into his instep, shattering small bones in the arch of his foot. It's was an immensely painful injury, and LeBeau hoped it would ruin that man's ability to teleport away.
Gambit was forced to dodge back as the knife came out in two tight arcs, and he pulled a handful of coins from his pocket to charge, only to see Wraith blink away. "Merde! Who's got him?" He yelled over the comm.
When the scuffle started Bishop slipped into a crowd. The explosion had people on the move and they never quite seemed to move the way they should when it was difficult to tell what was happening; great for a person who wanted to be closer to the action or the best escape route. When the target popped back up, shots rang out immediately. "Get the fuck down." The huge man shoved the deafened person in front of him down to the sidewalk. He couldn't risk warning any of them before hand, he needed his position to be absolutely secret.
The bullets passed through empty air as Wraith slid away. Everything was a blur to him, made all the more disorienting by the awful pain in his foot. He couldn't make out who had sprayed that stuff all over him and then broke his foot, but it was obvious that they were the main threat. Wraith teleported again and aimed another punch at Remy, and as soon as he realized it wouldn't connect, slipped behind him to slash his throat.
"You keep making de same mistake, homme." Remy muttered, catching the wrist before the blade could reach him, and slamming his elbow into his midsection, winding him. He drove his head back, breaking the man's nose with the back of his head, and then trapped their left legs together, pulling the dazed man trapped next to him. It held him for a moment, providing an open shot on the momentarily helpless man.
Jubilee had wedged the camera up high, and then headed down to ground level the moment the fighting started. Now she rushed in, attempting to take advantage of the hold Remy had on their target. Her hands were already glowing, spitting small fireworks from her fingertips as she advanced on the two combatants. She let a few of them go, streaking them toward Wraith to take advantage of the opening Remy had given them. Should he avoid them, she could loop them around and explode them in his face, hopefully frying his optical nerves and giving them a further advantage.
Half-blinded by the first attack and nearly incapacitated by Remy's counter, Wraith noticed the new addition too late. He howled in pain and rage as the plasma bursts exploded in his face and lashed out against Remy with his feet. He succeeded in freeing himself and teleported away to the back of the alley. He couldn't see anything now, but he remembered the layout of the area and teleported up to the fire escape he'd first retreated to, and then to the other platform across from him. The shadows wrapped around his mind even closer in an effort to mask himself from perception even with the purple goo covering him.
Morgan's gun had remained trained on the guy but Remy was either handling it or too close for her to take a shot. There was nothing like shooting your new boss. Some sort of offensive mutation would have been really fucking handy. Instead she followed things as best she could given all the teleporting. when the attacker, if he still counted as one, disappeared again David's eyes swept the area until the goo-covered man was spotted. Jubilee's attack had clearly done a job on his vision. Morgan didn't have a clear shot, but she could get close enough that he wouldn't know that if he couldn't see properly. Three shots rang out in quick succession. Two she knew would miss, but the third held the possibility of making contact. It wouldn't kill or likely even injure badly, but it'd sting like a bitch and help distract him for someone who did have a clear shot.
It did its job. The searing hot lead burrowed into Wraith's shoulder and he felt the bones shatter. He instinctively teleported away, finally accepting that the battle was lost for now and he needed time to regroup and find the real Maverick. But he misjudged his steps, and instead of slipping down to the sidewalk out of the alley, he reappeared in the middle of the street and was promptly met by over two tons of UPS-branded steel and aluminum traveling a mere forty miles an hour.
Marie-Ange tapped her ear-piece as she rolled the window of the SUV up. "I believe Wraith is dead. I just saw him teleport in front of a delivery truck." She could see the body lying unmoving under the truck that he had teleported in front of, and the driver of the truck that had hit him getting out, phone in hand. It wasn't necessary to suggest they leave fast, her teammates had enough sense to already be on the move. "I will stay here until I see if the EMT's attempt medical care or if the coroner arrives."
"If dey get him to a hospital, we'll take care of him den." Remy said, coldly. Wraith had been dangerous, and exactly the kind of person to look for revenge if he survived. The Cajun wasn't about to let that happen. "Everyone, evaporate. Clear de scene. I'll see you all back at Finnigan's later."
X-Force did exactly that, following prearranged random routes away from the scene, leaving only Marie-Ange to finish monitoring the situation. Even now they could hear the sounds of sirens, although by the time the police reached the scene, there would be nothing left but the corpse and a highly upset delivery driver, trying to explain that the man just 'appeared' in front of his truck. Another tragic traffic accident in the city, nothing more.
John Wraith had spent years training to be one of the best special ops soldiers in the world. He'd learned from the best. He could slip into the most protected compound and slaughter everyone inside before any of his victims would even know they were dead. Nothing and no one was safe from him once he'd acquired his target. The few people alive who even knew his name knew that and rightfully lived in fear that should he so desire, he would come after them.
So when Maverick wandered into the ghetto of Spanish Harlem alone and unprotected, Wraith was mildly perturbed. Either his former partner had grown into a complete idiot or he was planning something. Wraith shadowed his target down a sparse 100th Street, his mind cloaked from passersby. If this was a trap, then he would be the one to spring it, not Maverick.
The problem with pulling off a believable mimic of an actual person was studying them. Morgan hadn't had enough time to study David for her liking. Short notice could do that. She managed to get his walk down and the important physical ticks that would identify him as himself and acting normally to just about anyone who knew him. She hadn't gotten more than that, though, so if she had to open her mouth it was going to be mostly downhill. It wasn't that she didn't have his voice, it was that she hadn't gotten his manner of speaking down. With any luck the ambush would spring before she had to speak to the target. He knew David too well, she was sure, to be fooled by her for long. Then again, all she needed was for him to be fooled long enough.
"David" walked through the streets, alone and unprotected but not necessarily at ease. Morgan made sure he looked like he was on guard. His eyes moved constantly, he didn't walk in a straight line so as to make it harder to take his feet out from under him, and there was an air about him of a man who could reach for his weapon at any moment. Too bad precognition was such a bitch, Morgan would have loved a little heads-up about when she was going to get pounced on.
Spanish Harlem. Marie-Ange would've stuck out like a sore thumb, all long legs and red hair and expensive clothes. If she'd been outside instead of in the back of a rented SUV with one of the ruggedized laptops watching Morgan-as-David from the discreet camera disguised as a New York Jets antenna ball. Waiting patiently was harder than it looked, even with giving regular reports to her teammates, it was tedious.
"Sightlines are clear. Copycat, in two minutes, I want you to stop walking. Look into a store window or something. Let's see who pauses." Remy was sitting comfortably on a bench waiting for a bus while he talked on his cell phone. Except the phone went right into the comms they had in their ears. Identifying someone on a busy street was difficult if you knew them on sight. On description only and with the man attempting to keep himself anonymous, it was even more difficult.
Which is why they wouldn't bother trying to identify the face, but instead, to identify the reactions. Wraith would be watching, checking to make sure the area was clear before moving in. He'd had to track Morgan in her disguise, and his movements would eventually break the normal flow of the sidewalk traffic. He's sent Jubilee up into the roofs, watching and sending a birds-eye view through a portable video camera down to Marie-Ange's position.
"Bishop, anything on you end?"
"Nothing out of place yet." He spoke into a coffee cup, his eyes tracing over the window of the cafe in front of him, using the reflection for his surveillance. "Not even a repeat passer by." It was unlikely that they would be looking for a vehicle. One missing its driver suddenly would really stand out. Despite that, Bishop kept his eyes on all the traffic.
Jubilee trained the video camera slightly behind Morgan, panning from left to right and pausing on things and people she thought might be of interest. After a few moments, she flipped the small video camera closed, tucked it into a bag along her back, then took off over the roofs again. It wasn't difficult, not after all this time training with both the thieves guild, and Remy himself. She jumped gaps and scrambled up roof edges, her eyes always on Morgan as the shapeshifter walked the street below.
"Nothing I can see yet." Jubilee said, finally coming to rest a few yards in front of where Morgan walked, flipping the camera out of the bag again and setting it up. "Video incoming, Tarot."
Wraith sat down at a bus stop across the street from Maverick and carefully studied him. He was on edge, for sure, and looked like he was on his way to meet someone, which meant Wraith had to do the job quickly. Maverick's death would be an easy one, but adding another former "colleague" would be an unnecessary complication. "Such a nice day, isn't it?" he said quietly to the young woman reading a magazine next to him, and she looked up in confusion, unable to see the speaker. He flashed her his pearly smile and teleported away to continue his tracking.
It only took a few moments for the video to stream from Jubilee's camera to Marie-Ange's laptop, and she watched it in stutter-steps, fast forwarding to catch movement and pausing when something caught her eye. A populated bus stop, and a black man who wormed his way between people like they could not see him. It wasn't the indifference of a normal New York City crowd, even with the typical 'this is my space, you move around me' attitude, people didn't stand that still when someone was moving around them. "Bus stop! Gambit, how many people are at the bus stop across from your location? I have six on the video."
"Dere's five-- wait." Remy shot a glance over to the opposite side of the street, and then closed his eyes for a second. No one had ever figured out exactly how LeBeau's spatial sense worked. It wasn't like a radar, but at the same time, he was able to pick up on things he couldn't see properly, leaving it obvious that it wasn't completely visually based. The crowd was just at the fringes, but it didn't feel right. Gambit opened his eyes again.
"Dat's got to be him. Dere's someone moving in dat crowd I can't see." He got up and walked over to the cluster of newspaper boxes, changing his own sightlines. "Copycat, start moving towards de cul-de-sac. Tarot, keep Jubilee on him. When he gets away from de crowd, mark him for Bishop. You got de first shot, homme."
While they had been spotting the tail, the David that was bait had been pretending to browse the books in a window display. Moving on casually, he filtered back into the crowd. Morgan slumped his shoulders a bit to mirror those around her who were huddled against the cold wind. She wove through the moving crowd easily, both blending in and making her way to their ambush point. The down side, of course, was that if Bishop didn't pull the trigger fast enough the only ambush would be on her.
Cul-de-sac was an awfully posh term for a dead end street, which was much more fitting for the one Morgan was strolling down in David's body. The tall buildings on each side provided enough shade for dodgy business dealings, ambushes and assassinations alike. David paused at the end and turned so his back was agains the wall and he could look down to his left to watch people walk past on the main street, or see someone enter to come toward him. Morgan simply waited patiently.
Wraith smirked. Maverick looked like some confused downtowner looking to score some rock. If he just let the other man stay for a while, he wouldn't have been surprised if a dealer did approach him. Or, he considered, someone who would make his own job more difficult. Wraith quickly doubled back to the bus stop and ghosted up and down the street, looking to make sure that no one was following the target. Satisfied that there was no immediate backup, Wraith sidled up next to Maverick and a wicked-looking knife seemingly appeared out of nowhere into his grasp.
"Contact. Wraith has made contact with Copycat." Marie-Ange sounded calmer than she felt as she reported the location through her comm. Maneuvering the laptop so it did not close as she climbed into the front passenger seat of the SUV was annoying, but it was better than being in the back, and she might need to take over driving from Bishop in a hurry. "Jubilee, keep the camera on them until we have a confirmed... merde, there is no confirming visuals with this one, find a place to put that camera where it will not move!"
"I'm on it, Tarot. Getting to a better position now." Jubilee noted, before flipping her celphone closed, then jumping from the position she was currently inhabiting to the fire escape below. She needed to get closer to ground level to give the others a good line of sight without letting Wraith know she was around.
Luckily, she looked like any other New Yorker, rugged up for the cold weather, and just trying to find a quicker way home. She swung across the space in between buildings and then hit the pavement, dashing across the road to the entrance of the cul-de-sac before taking a jump from a nearby fire hydriant and catching at the roof of a bu stop to give herself a platform up to the higher levels.
People would be watching her, obviously, but most of them would just see a free running enthusiast.
"Okay, I'm there. Not many places to stick this thing, I'm just going to have to hold onto it." she noted in a quiet murmur.
"Copycat, I'm closing." Remy was just getting bits off the man, more like a hole in his senses, that effected everything around it. It was essentially using the background to target a blank, hardly his most optimal situation, but the one they were left with. He tucked his cellphone in his pocket, just shading behind Morgan.
"Now!" Remy suddenly darted forward, his hands coming out of his pockets with two ziplock bags glowing purple. At the sound, they moved just like they had rehearsed, Morgan closing her eyes and pulling the scarf up over her face. Both bags exploded from the charged kinetic energy, and Wraith was hit with a cloud of particles. They used to call it 'devil's brew' in the agency; just a mix of iron filings, black pepper, capsicum soaked cotton bags that vaporized on explosion into a non-aerosol substitute for tear gas, and their own little twist, a phosphoresent dye power similar to those slipped into anti-robbery packs. That noxious cloud was pushed forward from the charge from Remy's powers, and enveloped Wraith.
Morgan was mostly hoping that knife didn't end up sheathed inside of her while her eyes were closed. She was counting down silently, waiting until it would be safe enough to open her eyes again. As she did so she stepped sideways away from Wraith and his shiny friend. To be honest, if she had that knife in her hand there wouldn't have been much wait before she'd buried it up to its handle in someone's stomach. She tended to be impatient, though. Her eyes opened cautiously when she'd finished counting down, her favorite handgun already comfortably in her grasp.
"I see you." David's voice sounded more amused than Morgan could imagine the actual man ever sounding. She trained her sights on the man covered in dye and dust. She wasn't expecting to get a shot off, she just wanted to see how far he could run. There were enough of them nearby, she didn't need to be the one to take him down. If he tried to stick his knife in her, though, she might.
He'd been tricked! Whoever these people were, they were good. Wraith swore at himself silently as he slipped away from the impostor and the intruder, frantically rubbing his eyes to clear his sight. He disappeared again, teleporting up a few feet onto a fire escape, and then again across the alley onto a higher level. He had a couple of options: fight or flight. While regrouping at this point might be strategically sound, they would only make his job harder. And for all intents and purposes, they were the enemy now, too. There was no doubt that this was kill or be killed. When his vision was clear enough to see where he was going again, Wraith slipped down and attacked the man who'd blinded him with an inhumanly fast jab to the neck.
The jab caught the Cajun high on the shoulder muscle, as he'd already been moving with the strike. The man was literally dripping with the dye, and now what had been a blank in Remy's senses as now a clearly defined form, nand his brain poured information to his reflexes. Gambit caught the followup blow at the wrist, twisting and slamming a hand into his solar plexus. As he staggered, Remy kicked downwards into his instep, shattering small bones in the arch of his foot. It's was an immensely painful injury, and LeBeau hoped it would ruin that man's ability to teleport away.
Gambit was forced to dodge back as the knife came out in two tight arcs, and he pulled a handful of coins from his pocket to charge, only to see Wraith blink away. "Merde! Who's got him?" He yelled over the comm.
When the scuffle started Bishop slipped into a crowd. The explosion had people on the move and they never quite seemed to move the way they should when it was difficult to tell what was happening; great for a person who wanted to be closer to the action or the best escape route. When the target popped back up, shots rang out immediately. "Get the fuck down." The huge man shoved the deafened person in front of him down to the sidewalk. He couldn't risk warning any of them before hand, he needed his position to be absolutely secret.
The bullets passed through empty air as Wraith slid away. Everything was a blur to him, made all the more disorienting by the awful pain in his foot. He couldn't make out who had sprayed that stuff all over him and then broke his foot, but it was obvious that they were the main threat. Wraith teleported again and aimed another punch at Remy, and as soon as he realized it wouldn't connect, slipped behind him to slash his throat.
"You keep making de same mistake, homme." Remy muttered, catching the wrist before the blade could reach him, and slamming his elbow into his midsection, winding him. He drove his head back, breaking the man's nose with the back of his head, and then trapped their left legs together, pulling the dazed man trapped next to him. It held him for a moment, providing an open shot on the momentarily helpless man.
Jubilee had wedged the camera up high, and then headed down to ground level the moment the fighting started. Now she rushed in, attempting to take advantage of the hold Remy had on their target. Her hands were already glowing, spitting small fireworks from her fingertips as she advanced on the two combatants. She let a few of them go, streaking them toward Wraith to take advantage of the opening Remy had given them. Should he avoid them, she could loop them around and explode them in his face, hopefully frying his optical nerves and giving them a further advantage.
Half-blinded by the first attack and nearly incapacitated by Remy's counter, Wraith noticed the new addition too late. He howled in pain and rage as the plasma bursts exploded in his face and lashed out against Remy with his feet. He succeeded in freeing himself and teleported away to the back of the alley. He couldn't see anything now, but he remembered the layout of the area and teleported up to the fire escape he'd first retreated to, and then to the other platform across from him. The shadows wrapped around his mind even closer in an effort to mask himself from perception even with the purple goo covering him.
Morgan's gun had remained trained on the guy but Remy was either handling it or too close for her to take a shot. There was nothing like shooting your new boss. Some sort of offensive mutation would have been really fucking handy. Instead she followed things as best she could given all the teleporting. when the attacker, if he still counted as one, disappeared again David's eyes swept the area until the goo-covered man was spotted. Jubilee's attack had clearly done a job on his vision. Morgan didn't have a clear shot, but she could get close enough that he wouldn't know that if he couldn't see properly. Three shots rang out in quick succession. Two she knew would miss, but the third held the possibility of making contact. It wouldn't kill or likely even injure badly, but it'd sting like a bitch and help distract him for someone who did have a clear shot.
It did its job. The searing hot lead burrowed into Wraith's shoulder and he felt the bones shatter. He instinctively teleported away, finally accepting that the battle was lost for now and he needed time to regroup and find the real Maverick. But he misjudged his steps, and instead of slipping down to the sidewalk out of the alley, he reappeared in the middle of the street and was promptly met by over two tons of UPS-branded steel and aluminum traveling a mere forty miles an hour.
Marie-Ange tapped her ear-piece as she rolled the window of the SUV up. "I believe Wraith is dead. I just saw him teleport in front of a delivery truck." She could see the body lying unmoving under the truck that he had teleported in front of, and the driver of the truck that had hit him getting out, phone in hand. It wasn't necessary to suggest they leave fast, her teammates had enough sense to already be on the move. "I will stay here until I see if the EMT's attempt medical care or if the coroner arrives."
"If dey get him to a hospital, we'll take care of him den." Remy said, coldly. Wraith had been dangerous, and exactly the kind of person to look for revenge if he survived. The Cajun wasn't about to let that happen. "Everyone, evaporate. Clear de scene. I'll see you all back at Finnigan's later."
X-Force did exactly that, following prearranged random routes away from the scene, leaving only Marie-Ange to finish monitoring the situation. Even now they could hear the sounds of sirens, although by the time the police reached the scene, there would be nothing left but the corpse and a highly upset delivery driver, trying to explain that the man just 'appeared' in front of his truck. Another tragic traffic accident in the city, nothing more.
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