xp_logs | Fifth Column: The Tide

The first signs of trouble reach the mansion, and in Budapest, the X-Men fight to turn the tide back in the right direction.

Scott had excused himself briefly, muttering something about getting coffee, and left Angel to watch the newsfeeds - and, more important, the coms suite - by herself for the first time she'd officially become a trainee. It was only the worst of luck that roughly five minutes after he'd departed, the BBC and CNN broke the news of multiple explosions in Budapest.

Angel froze in the chair she was perched in, the pile of reading Scott had given her tumbling to the floor as she stared as the newsfeeds ticked by. They seemed to be going faster, spitting out the same information, as she leaned forward.

"Oh no, no, no you couldn't have waited?" she said to herself, staring in alarm at the comms and hoping they wouldn't go off. Or, actually, hoping they would because they had a team down there, right? "Mr. Summers?" she called, looking over her shoulder. "Mr. Summers, um...?"

She took a deep breath and reminded herself that she was a trainee now. "Cyclops!" Okay, maybe a slightly freaked out trainee.

The Situation Room door slid aside and Scott hobbled in, on one crutch - he'd needed the other hand for the coffee. He saw Angel's state of agitation and both his eyebrows went up. "I can't turn my back for ten minutes, can I?" he muttered, setting the coffee on the nearest level surface and hopping back over to the chair beside hers. "What's going on?"

Right. Right, she had to not spaz out at him. "Um." Saying big explody things was certainly not going to help. Angel took a deep breath and pointed to the CNN feed. "They're saying there are multiple explosions in various parts of Budapest but the government hasn't reacted yet. And nothing over the comms."

There. Much better than big explody things.

Scott took a deep breath, then let it out again. There was nothing on the link with Jean, but of course, there wouldn't be at this distance. "Okay," he said, business-like, and leaned towards the console, setting up a ping on the coms. "Chances are, our people are right in the middle of the mess. We can probably expect no contact for a while if that's true."

"Oh." She chewed on her thumb, files forgotten, as she stared at the equipment around her. "What - what do we do now?" she asked, staring up at him, eyes huge. It was weird, seeing him be all calm during this - it was weird but she fed off of it, tried to imitate it. Not well but she tried.

"We watch the newsfeeds, gather as much information as we can from here about what's going on there." While he spoke to Angel, he was mentally calling out to Charles, alerting him to the situation. "And there are people the Professor can call in Budapest. So long as he's able to get through we should be able to count on getting updated." He stared hard at the grainy images on the screen. Looked like cell phone footage, mostly. Hard to tell, and he hadn't seen pictures of the target buildings, just read descriptions...

Angel leaned over haphazardly to push through the files and papers at her feet; she straightened only when she tightly held onto a notepad and a pen. She'd been making notes of questions to ask him, or another X-Man, after she was done reading. "I can make notes," she said, hoping he wouldn't laugh.

"Do that," Scott said with an immediate nod. "Any mention of specific locations." It was probably pointless busywork; he would be very surprised if said locations didn't match the raid locations. "And breathe, Angelica," he said with a very faint smile. "We may have to wait for a while to find out anything concrete."

"Specific locations, check. Remembering to breathe ..." She took in a deep breath sheepishly. "Check."

---

By the time the streetlight connected with the grey-skinned mutant, it had rusted so completely it crumbled into dust upon impact, courtesy of a white disk from Jennie. She then turned her attention to the energy projectors on the roof, who had noticed the girl in black. Jennie barely dodged a white-hot gout of plasma that melted the blacktop next to her. Cursing loudly, she squinted at the roof. How to do this with no casualties? She could just drop them all off, but it was a six story drop.

And X-Men didn't kill.

Another burst of plasma hit the sidewalk in front of her, and Jennie could smell singed hair. With an audible snarl, she flung out a red disk hitting the plasma thrower squarely in the chest. He blinked and briefly touched a hand to his chest, then dropped to his knees and vomited all over himself.

"Skin! We gotta do something with the civvies!" It was a little strange calling the police 'civvies' but they were about as useful right now. Human, a couple had guns, but they were completely inexperienced in this sort of thing. Combat vets or not, and Clarice didn't know, they weren't used to mutants and didn't speak English. Blinking the mountain man away was a strain, he was extremely heavy and she sagged for a moment, behind a parked car with the policemen, "You okay?" she asked them, to blank stares.

There was a sudden, erratic breeze that resolved into a distinctly human-sized blur; a young woman, it turned out, as she paused for long enough to change direction. Her new trajectory took her directly into a line of police officers, and she tore through them at superhuman speed, the officers completely unable to react in time to defend themselves.

"Speedster!" Angelo said tensely, in case Clarice hadn't noticed the clear pause. "Blink, set up portals around Roulette, don't let that one get her. I'll try an' take her down." It wasn't going to be easy getting a grip on the young woman long enough to cut off her air, though.

"No shit, sherlock!" Clarice shot back, opening two blink disks at once. There was no way for her to open an odd number since every disk had to have a start and a finish, there was no staying trapped in one of her portals forever. Where they finished though and where they started had to be different too. Opening more than one disk at a time was tricky, but these were small and she could almost kneel there with the cops moving them in crazy raver patterns to stop the speedster and catch her.

Jennie brought a hand to her head, shielding her eyes from the lights of Clarice's portals. The lights were changing too fast, Jennie could barely keep up. Think, concentrate dammit. A sheen of perspiration broke out on Jennie's forehead and she felt the nausea rise up again. She shoved it down and flung out both hands. Two red disks collided harmlessly in midair, but the miniature tornado they created was strong enough to take out another of her assailants flinging them down to rooftop hard.

"One more on the roof," Jennie panted. "Buy me a little more time...."

It was something of a surprise when the next attack came from another direction entirely. With Angelo and Clarice focused on the speedster, and Jennie on the snipers on the roof, it was left to one of the police officers to spot the tall, dark-haired woman running in their direction from across the square. He immediately raised his gun; she went down to one knee, extending a hand, and the yellow-red shockwave of energy rolled across the line of police officers before even one could get a shot off. It didn't burn, or leave any visible trace, but the police officers fell, twitching in seizures of some sort.

Clarice was caught in the edge of the blast and her blink disks disappeared as quickly as they had come as she fell, blood dripping slowly from her nose. Ow. She wasn't incapacitated like the fallen police officers behind her, but damn did that hurt. Thankfully, it was obvious to see that they were breathing, "Fuckaduck," she muttered, pulling a glove off and using the back of her hand to wipe her face as she turned, peering through a car window at the woman who had created the pulse. She was down, but not out. Clarice waited a minute to see what she was going to do next...and take some time to recover from the shockwave herself.

The speedster, suddenly, wasn't the priority here. Angelo hadn't been touched by the shockwave, but he was on his knees anyway, fingers buried to the first knuckle in the grass and the earth beneath. He'd had an idea, and very faint ripples were visible in the ground, heading towards the brunette... who suddenly cursed in shock as she found herself up to her ankles and still sinking.

Jennie didn't even blink when the last woman went underground. One last red disk and the last of the energy projectors went down, falling through a weak spot in the roof. Without pause, Jennie looked level and tossed another red disk, and the speedster heading for her tripped and slammed into a nearby car. Hard.

The woman Angelo was pulling down into the earth stopped struggling and smiled, saying something under her breath, inaudible to her attacker. She reached out both hands, laying them flat against the earth.

And the shockwave traveled, through the ground this time. It didn't quite reach them, but her smile stayed on, her features scrunching up in concentration as she got set to try again.

"Playin' earthquakes, are we", he muttered, not even bothering to try to keep his balance. It wasn't as if he needed to, he was anchored enough, and he wasn't giving up. Four out of ten strips of skin released her legs and shot up out of the earth, latching tightly around her wrists and pulling them down too. All in the name of quick trapping...

One red disk sailed through the air, smacking the woman squarely in the face. The ground around her became soft and pliable, making it easy for Angelo to drag the woman down up to her neck.

Jennie looked over at her shoulder at Clarice. "Blink! What's up with the civilians? Is everyone okay?"

"Yeah! Nothing charades won't fix!" Trying to get the cops to do anything was like herding drunken cats. The cops wanted to be helpful, were completely out of their element and did not speak English. Checking their eyes and their heart rates was challenge enough and then stopping them from helping? Please. Thankfully, she just sat them all back down hard, "Stay," she enunciated clearly, though she doubted they understood. "Anyone left?" she asked. The speedster and mountain man were taken care of, the shockwave woman was down, so were several men on the roofs....things were quiet, at least for the moment.

---

There was a strange jutter as their consciousness' separated, the process abnormally slowed by the freeze. But Jim had connected them all a split-second before Zanne's power had triggered, and as she made her move her teammate pulled the web tight. The moment stretched around them, then snapped -- and the three of them were in Amara's mindscape.

Confident here, the telepath had positioned himself slightly in front of Zanne. He wore no armor, not even his uniform. The only visible evidence of strain was Jack standing hard at his back, the alter's shade sharpened by adrenaline. The place they stood might once have been jungle, but now only blackened trunks remained. They stretched stark against a red sky, the air skirling with ash, embers, and shreds of withered vegetation. Any attempt to draw breath found only a heat so intense it hit the lungs like a fist.

And ahead of them -- fire.

Amara had honestly never really come to terms with her powers - and this was why. She honestly believed they were too destructive, that this was all she could do with them. Even as she learned how to use them constructively during her X-Men training, she constantly lived with this fear of what she could do to the people and landscape around her.

She loomed in the distance - many times her usual height, she radiated heat and light in every direction, flames swirling and flaring and dripping from her as she realised she wasn't alone. She turned her gaze to look at them, the ground cracking under her feet.

"You shouldn't be here." They would just get hurt - they would burn. And it would be her fault. Again.

"It's all right, Amara. We're just here to talk." The telepath hadn't raised his voice, but his words arrived at her ears as if he were standing beside her. Implausibly, the building tremors appeared to have no effect on him.

"It's too dangerous," she replied, as if she only half heard what he said. Which was close to the truth. She was more concerned with the fact that she was going to kill them if they stayed here too much longer. "You'll burn."

There wasn't a hint of doubt in the telepath's reply. "No. We won't."

"Sway."

Jack? Zanne asked cautiously of the figure in front of her. There were only so may people Haller could be, and one of them was already engaged with a Godzilla-sized Amara.

The older man nodded. The figure nearly overlapped with Jim, but where the telepath's entire attention was fixed on Amara, the telekinetic's was on Zanne.

"That girl, first time she used her powers -- she lost control. Xavier told us. She killed. Killed, and after all this time never has talked of it. To anyone." His attention swung to Amara's incandescent form, then back to where Zanne stood, a living shadow against the flames in her black sweater and slacks. His grey eyes held steady on hers. "You understand?"

Zanne closed her eyes. Christ. Nothing was ever what it seemed. I understand, she replied after a moment. I'm just not sure what I can do.

The alter flashed white teeth at her. "With us, you can walk through fire."

"We're safe here, Amara," said Jim, his voice carrying to Amara, "and none of us are going to burn." He took a step forward.

"I can't make it stop," she said with a catch in her voice, taking a step backward in response to his forward. "Everything's going to burn."

The ground around her reacted; lava began to well from the split earth. Bubbling, spitting. The molten earth began to crawl towards them even as the girl retreated.

Jim and Jack's shade behind him turned to Zanne where she stood, her astral form strangely insubstantial in the face of Amara's fire. The same question was in each of their eyes. Then the telepath and his alter turned away, and took a step into the pool of fire.

Every psi's power had its own expression. Betsy's purple butterflies, Jean's crimson flames, Nathan's shafts of golden light. As Jim walked, his let his own begin to bleed forth -- pure, white water, diffusing into the lava with every step.

And he did not burn.

Zanne followed in Jack's steps, silently marveling at the manifestation of Jim's power. Her visits to the astral plane were so few and far between that novelty had yet to wear off, and she remained amazed. Around them, the jungle started to become greener, even more wild and alive with each step they took.

"Stop, please." But Amara didn't sound quite so sure anymore, they just kept moving forward and with every step, things changed. Water ran where lava had once been, lush foliage returned to previously dead trees. It helped, seeing things change, watching calm and life return to the landscape. She shook a little, the flame around her starting to die down in response. "You don't understand. How bad it could get." She was pleading now, but the hysterical note in her voice was starting to disappear.

"Maybe not," Jim said, "but I know what it's like to be afraid of it. It's okay." For an instant another image flickered over the jungle: the inside of what had once been a convenience store, demolished and scattered with dying fires. Just a shadow, gone in an instant, replaced by burgeoning jungle and cool breeze. The telepath took another step towards the girl, gesturing back to include Zanne. "It's okay. We're not going to let anything happen. It's okay."

Amara's form was rapidly starting to shrink - while she hadn't powered down yet, she didn't tower over the landscape like an vengeful goddess. The flash of the image startled her - it wasn't the same, and it certainly couldn't be the same, but it was enough to make her pause. "This isn't supposed to happen. I was under control."

"And now you're getting there again." Jim finally halted before the girl. Water lapped around his feet, rippling white. She was calming, but he could still feel it: fear, lying beneath the mindscape like a bedrock. It confirmed his suspicions. It would have been easy to impose calm on her mind, but the underlying cause was something only Amara could touch. More than that, he knew too well what it was like to have control forced upon you. To be left not only without faith in yourself, but the belief no one else trusted in you, either. Being able to give Amara the chance to regain it for herself -- it was a luxury. Thank you, Zanne.

"I don't know if I can sustain it." Which was always the problem. One moment of calm after a blow-up didn't necessarily lead to an extended calm, which is why Amara had always worked so hard not to get upset. She constantly swallowed her pride, her anger, any emotion that could lead her - well, this. Panic, buildings rumbling, fires burning. But despite her worry, she finally reached her regular height, her light around her flaring once before all but flickering out thanks to Jim's proximity. She finally took a deep breath, her figure returning to something familiar - not her X-Men leathers, but something she might have worn at home. The material was a silvery blue, a gown vaguely in the style of an ancient roman stola. "But we need to complete the mission." And whatever her worries were - her concerns were less important than the mission. She could fall apart again properly later.

#Jack.# Zanne reached out to rest a hand on the figure's shoulder. #I'm not sure I can hold this much longer.# A wave of dizziness swept over her as her focus wavered and she stumbled slightly.

The alter, almost invisible in the direct sunlight of Amara's restored mindscape, caught her eye and nodded. In front of him, Jim addressed Amara. "We do. I'm going to take us out now, all right? If you don't feel comfortable, just hang back. Zanne and I can handle it."

As he began to withdraw them the telepath glanced at Zanne, noting the strain on the face of her translucent avatar . . . translucent except for something deep in her chest, suspended where her heart would be. Almost a cylinder, with a gleam like glass -- but then they were out, and back in the real world.

At which point the floor collapsed.

Zanne felt the floor begin to dissolve under her feet only moments after she had released the freeze. This explains a lot, she thought with grim humor as she cast another one around Haller, Amara and herself, a pulsing throb of pain starting up behind her eyes. Under the pressure of Amara's powers, the building had begun to fall apart around them while they had been elsewhere, and the pressure of suspending them in place was taking its toll.

She tried to figure out their options. Around them much of the floor had already disappeared, leaving them seemingly as if on an island in a sea of nothing. A clatter went up at the end of the what remained of the hall as a wall detached from its moorings and disappeared into the darkness below. "It looks, ladies and gentlemen, like the only way out is down. Hold on to your hats," She murmured, coming to a decision and projecting it at Haller. Hopefully he'd be able to handle Amara.

Grabbing both of their hands, she released the bubble and they began to fall.

Ignoring the lurch in his stomach, Jim reached over and grabbed Amara's free hand. He had just enough time to send her a telepathic touch of reassurance and catch a glimpse of Zanne's face, taut with concentration, before time -- and the fall -- arrested again.

When they'd started to fall, Amara had just held her breath and squeezed her eyes closed. She couldn't think about what was happening, she just needed to relax. Or at least stay calm, she would not let there be a repeat of what had just happened. When they stopped and Jim grabbed her hand, her eyes flew open. When they stopped again, a smile broke over her face - this wasn't so bad, she could do this.

"Thank you," she mouthed before the fall began again, her breath coming steadily again. She could do this. And they were going to be fine.

Zanne focused on trying to control their descent, the teeth-rattling stops coming closer together as they neared the ground floor. Three...two...one more.. The trio hit the ground with a soft thud. Zanne ducked her head to hide the wild grin that accompanied the sudden, pounding lightheadedness. "Thank you for traveling Sway Express. We know you have no other travel options..."

"Except theirs," observed Jim as he gingerly released the womens' hands. Two of the ambushers had followed them down, but not well. The one with apparent air powers was lying unconscious under the rubble, head bloodied. The other, the man from the second wave, was conscious but pinned by one side of his body. From the sound of it, the officers were on their way down the stairs. The telepath looked up at the sizable hole in the floor above and winced. "It doesn't seem like they really thought this through."

---

Monet screamed as her leathers caught fire. She fell like a stone, hitting the ground and rolling frantically, trying to smother the fire, coughing on the smoke from her leathers. She could actually feel the heat in the fire, a toasty warmth although it wasn't (quite) hot enough to burn her yet.

Kurt was at her side a second later, helping her to roll out the fire. His eyes narrowed as he looked up at the building, trying to pin down the source of the fireballs.

#Leave it!# she sent to him. #You'll get burnt.# Monet gave up trying to get the flames to go out, since they well, weren't, and rolled to her knees, doubled over and coughing madly.

She was right, and he lifted his hands away in acknowledgment. Having identified the right window, he stared up at it, then looked back at Monet, reluctant to just leave her like that. "Get water!" he snapped at the nearest policeman.

#Quickly! This is getting really hot!# Monet snarled. The poor policeman looked absolutely startled to hear her using her telepathy but, dammit, her leathers stank, it was hot and they were falling apart. She was not going to wind up naked and on fire in front of the entire Hungarian police force. Ever.

The officer looked around helplessly, then took off his jacket, flinging it around Monet and then patting at it frantically. It actually worked; the flames were effectively smothered, although the jacket would be as much of a loss as Monet's leathers. The officer looked relieved to see no burned skin beneath the rents in her leathers, and said something reassuring in Hungarian.

Some of the police officers were firing upwards at the building, and the fiery 'arm' reappeared, extending far enough to sweep along the ground, knocking the police down like bowling pins even as it set their clothing and hair afire. Other officers converged on the scene, running desperately for their comrades to put out the flames. But the rescue attempts were abruptly thwarted by what could only be described as a sonic boom, coming from the western side of the building. It sent vehicles and human bodies alike flying, and blasted away the ground like someone had taken a giant ice cream scoop to the earth.

Kurt was no longer on the ground by the time it hit, instead clinging to the side of the building hiding the fireball-thrower. He looked down at the devastation in horror, trying to work out what best to do. "We cannot protect you from these powers and stop them at the same time, and there may be still more", he called down after a moment. "All of you, retreat."

Monet tugged what remained of the jacket closer around her shoulders and ran toward the side of the building the sonic boom had come from. Kurt watched her go until she was out of sight, then turned to keep climbing to the window he'd picked out earlier. Someone, fireball powers or not, was about to suffer the ass-kicking of their life, and the young woman in the room actually fell back a step when he erupted through the window like the wrath of the devil.

She noted Kurt go in the window and then... the world became nothing but sound. Monet found herself lying on the ground in the middle of another sonic boom crater, the horizon tilting crazily around and around and around while all she could hear was a loud ringing noise. The ground was nice, though, she thought blearily.

There was a woman standing on the edge of the crater, looking down on her in what seemed like honest curiosity - and recognition. She said something that Monet couldn't hear over the ringing, but the movement of her lips allowed Monet to catch a couple of words. Morocco being the most recognizable.

Then the woman stretched out her hands and another sonic boom erupted, this one at a much closer range.

It crashed down on her again, sending her deeper into the crater. Small rocks and dust rained down on her. The woman smiled and sent another boom at Monet, this one angled to send her flying through the air. Monet landed hard, nose bleeding. She didn't try to get up.

---

"You'll do," the pyrokinetic said to Kurt in lightly accented English as she straightened, her initial startlement gone as if it had never been. Everything around her caught fire - floor, furniture, even the ceiling - as waves of searing heat billowed around her. "Burn," she hissed softly, and the very air around her burst into flames.

"Oh, little one, I am not so easily caught." She wasn't directly aiming at him, and his leathers were smouldering but not burning yet. Kurt took a running leap, aiming a hard kick at her face with no regard for his feet in the fire.

She flung herself to the ground in a roll, coming back to her feet, and the fire in the room intensified sharply. It was white-hot, suddenly, the air almost exploding under the weight of its fury. A chunk of the ceiling above caved in, just missing Kurt.

"Do you wish to die?" he demanded, skipping out of the way of the masonry and somehow seeming to never touch anything but air as he kept moving. "If you mean to bring the building down around us, I will go now and leave you to it."

"What makes you think I'd go down with the building?" And suddenly, terrifyingly, the young woman herself was changing, her body shimmering into a form sculpted out of flame, moving farther away from a human shape as Kurt watched.

There was nothing he could do. How could he fight someone he couldn't hit, even if it would have had any effect on her?

Weighing up his options, Kurt looked to the window, nodded once in defeat, and was gone. Time to cut their losses.

Upon exiting, however, it became perfectly obviously that someone among the police had been thinking; there was a firetruck there where they hadn't been only only a couple of minutes ago, its personnel already working frantically to set up a hose.

That got a small, grimly satisfied smile as he saw them turn the hose directly on the room he'd left only moments before. It didn't last long, however, as he realized who he wasn't seeing anywhere immediately obvious.

"Monet!" He was running for the new crater before the word was even finished.

She'd managed to roll over and get her hands under herself, halfway to sitting up. "Uuh," Monet groaned. She could see nothing but the crater and could hear only the ringing in her ears. A weak mental touch showed her that that woman was still standing on the edge of the crater, watching but Monet wasn't able to muster the coherent thought it would have taken to use telepathy on her and send her away.

The enemy was still there, and regardless of his feelings, she had to be dealt with first. Taking out two birds with one stone, Kurt hammered into the back of her, sending them both tumbling into the crater.

They didn't quite land on top of Monet, but almost. The woman slammed an elbow into Kurt's ribs as soon as they hit the bottom, buying herself enough space to roll out from under him. Instead of coming back at him, however, she scrambled towards Monet, grabbing the younger woman, hands planted firmly on either side of her head. "I have to wonder," she said, breathing heavily, "what a full blast of ultrasonics would do to her brain. Don't you?" The question was directed at Kurt - in perfect English, with a trace of a New York accent. Whoever she was, she definitely wasn't a Hungarian Preserver.

Monet was still too dizzy and disoriented to struggle, unable to try to fly away when she didn't even know which direction was up. At this stage, all she was really capable of acknowledging was that she really didn't want another sonic anything directed at her and that the other woman would probably do it. #No! Nonononono! Don't. Please. Don't,# she sent in an incoherent burst of terror.

Kurt's face set, catching that undirected burst as strongly as its intended target had, and he didn't bother with a verbal reply. The next second, he'd moved to only an inch away, close enough to tackle the woman viciously and knock her back into the crater wall, away from his lover.

He knocked the breath out of the woman, hitting her hard enough that even with her body armor, the force was enough to crack a rib or two. She managed to get a hand free, letting off a sonic blast at Kurt from only a few inches away.

The blast sent him flying back in turn, but he didn't loosen his grip on the woman, pulling her with him as blood started to trickle from his nose and ears. "You will not harm her again. And I... I will take you down."

Oh fuck. Kurt! Monet still wasn't up to moving much, if at all yet but she was feeling marginally less disoriented than before. Go team adrenaline. Taking a deep breath, she twitched one foot across slightly, making contact with the other woman's leg and used the contact to boost her telepathy. #Let him go, bitch.# The words were underscored with the strongest command she could manage (which wasn't very strong at all, right then), ordering her to let. him. go.

The struggle on the woman's face was obvious. But still, she planted her hand against Kurt's chest as they grappled, her teeth gritted. The buzz that started to fill the air between them was almost inaudible, more felt than heard.

He tried to wrench her hand away, bringing his legs up to kick at her and try to force her to let go. One hand also went to her face, covering her mouth and nose as best he could.

Kurt's struggles brought the woman's hand within Monet's reach. Grabbing it and squeezing, she screamed sleep and tired and stop, lie down and sleep into her mind. Moments later, Monet's eyes crossed and the world tilted sideways, a backlash headache adding to her already considerable bag of physical misfortune.

The woman went limp in Kurt's hands and he dropped her, uncaring of how she landed as he dropped to his knees. Still conscious but dizzy and fading, he half-crawled to Monet's side and wrapped his arms around her as he lay down. The police were there, looking down, and someone would pull them out soon.