Jailbreak - Search Party 3 - Sunday night

[x-penance.livejournal.com]

Search party three find Magnetic North have learned some new tricks during their time in jail.





It was nice to be out in the field again, after several years of lab work Hank McCoy had forgotten how enjoyable it was. His more bestial side was enjoying the manhunt the team was currently on; the steady beeping in his ear piece getting more frequent as they approached their quarry. "One click due East, South-East," Henry said, pausing to look at the small device in his large hands. From the branch he was hanging from he could see Amara hurrying to keep up.

Looking around the pine forest, Hank took a moment to realize if he didn't have the coat of blue fur, he'd be fairly cold under his modified leathers. One of his favorite inventions, created by someone other than himself, was firmly fastened to his back, a three liter Camelbak bag which was now about half-full. After a quick drink, Hank looked up to the obscured sky. Clicking on the microphone on his headset, "Have you seen any sign of them yet, Wasp?"

"Nope," Jan replied, high above the ground. She was higher than the others, but not by too much, as it seemed that most of the team in this group were also not earth-bound. Wasp's insect-like wings moved rapidly as she darted through the trees, looking for any sign of the people they were pursuing.

Kurt, conversely, was in the trees, swinging easily and near-silently between them to keep up with the others. He'd decided it might be better if their quarry didn't know he was there until the last minute. "Forests do make for good hiding", he noted. "But less so if you do not know them well, and I think they do not."

Amara was having to hurry to keep up with the rest of the group - a mere mortal in comparison to the others when it came to movement, she was currently thankful for all the time she spent on the treadmill. While she was hardly an accomplished woodsperson, she had spent enough time exploring the jungles surrounding Nova Roma that meant she managed not to trip on every root nor hitting her head on every tree branch that went past.

"This is definitely the way they've headed?" She asked, breathing heavily and hoping that they weren't actually heading in the wrong direction.

In a clearing only a short distance ahead of their pursuers, the group of Magnetic North and their tagalong fellow inmate had stopped their mad race through the forest. Brennan was cursing vehemently, staring at the empty field where their transpo was supposed to be waiting for them.

Shalimar shouted for him to shut up. "They're coming," the feral informed her friends. "Do we keep running and hope the transpo finds us or hold them off until our ride gets here?"

Brennan, Jesse, Arlee, Refrax, and Gregor took up fighting stances, but Lexa turned to Mad Dog (who for reasons unbeknownst to anyone at Magnetic North had followed them) to see what he thought they should do.

Mad Dog let his tongue loll out of his mouth as he sniffed the air. "Ooh." he said playfully. "We're gonna have company. Real soon-like." he giggled. Clawed, fanged, and by choice not entirely stable, he sounded excited by the idea. "Let's get reaaaaaady to ruuuumblllllle!" he chortled.

Shalimar rolled her eyes at Mad Dog's comment but jumped up into a tree at the edge of the clearing to wait for their 'company.'

Lexa seemed to disappear into thin air as she went invisible, Shalimar tracking her scent to a spot flanking her.

"Oh, yeah, we're going the right way," Jan confirmed, answering Amara's questions and alerting the group to what she had discovered. "I see them right over here, down on the ground. Looks like they're expecting someone, too, us I'd guess; they're not running, and they sure look like they're waiting for trouble."

"They're waiting for us?" Hank recalled his lessons from The Art of War. The terrain put them at equal advantages since neither were terribly familiar with it. Both sides were aware of the other and while their adversaries had the greater numbers, they most assuredly had better training. "Kurt, I have an idea. Can you teleport Amara around to the other side of them? If we can flank them, we may be able to end this without much of a brawl."

Looking around at the ground, Hank noticed a good layer of dead pine needles. "We could also cut off their retreat by starting some small fires- though I hate to do that if Amara can't control them."

"My teleportation is not exactly discreet", Kurt pointed out hesitantly. "But when you and Wasp are close enough to act immediately, yes, of course I could do that."

"I can control them," Amara said with a confidence that wasn't completely feigned. Amara's use of her pyrokinesis had been getting better, but it was certainly at it's best when it came to fires she'd created herself. "I could set the fire just before Nightcrawler teleported us?"

"We want to set them in the direction they've been running, can you do that?" Hank dropped down to the ground in a crouch and looked at the device, they were indeed stopped not too far from them.

Amara glanced around at the surroundings, then nodded. "Just around there, yes?" She pointed to the area behind the group they weren't going to be able to cover themselves.

"That should do nicely, did you get all that Wasp?" Hank asked, into the microphone.

"Caldera and Nightcrawler over on one side, you and me on the other," Jan summarized. "We make them go where we want them to go and still have an element of surprise."

"Affirmative, proceed with caution," Hank climbed back into the trees. "I'm guessing these nair-do-wells are going to overwhelmingly desire a return to prison life."

Amara took a deep breath, taking a moment to focus her mind so only her hands went up in flames, since she would be teleporting with Kurt after this. She moved quietly over near the area they'd decided on, letting the flames drip from her hands over the dry needles which caught fire easily, Amara being carefully not to let it spread too far or too quickly.

"Wasp, Beast, are you ready?" Kurt asked, dropping quietly down from his branch right beside Amara. "Just say the word."

"That word would be, ready to go," Hank said with an exerted grunt as he vaulted toward the small clearing where the fugitives were ready to make their stand. The distraction had worked, their attention was focused the other direction.






"Jesse, get the fires out," Shalimar ordered as she surveyed the change in their situation with a calm expression. She realized with a small smile that the order had been unnecessary, however, as her longtime friend had already taken off in the direction of the flames, making himself as dense as possible so he could steamroll the flames out. Meanwhile, she could scent Lexa moving towards a blue creature she spotted approaching from the trees. Another feral. Smile growing, Shalimar vaulted up into the trees herself to meet him head-on, hoping to get him on the ground so Lexa could attack him from another direction using her invisibility as a cover.

Kurt took his cue immediately and grabbed Amara's hand, teleporting them both to the far side of the clearing, where he let her go and turned into a fighting stance.

Hearing the 'bamf' noise, Arlee, Refrax, and Brennan turned to spot the blue man and the girl. Refrax and Brennan sent heat vision and electricity hurtling towards them, Brennan aiming for the blue man and Refrax aiming for the girl in an unspoken decision.

Time to fight. Now that she was clear from Kurt Amara let her powers consume her, the pretty young blonde disappearing in a rush of flame. The blast of heat vision caught her off-guard, sending her stumbling back quite a few steps before she was able to right herself and join the fight.

Jan noticed rustling in the trees and flew in the direction of the movement she had spotted. Sneaking up on the feral, she placed a hand right above Shalimar's shoulder, letting her bio-electricity move out from her hands and into the other woman.

Feeling like someone had rubbed their shoes on a carpet to shock her, Shalimar's eyes narrowed at the irritation on her shoulder and slapped at whatever bug had bitten her, focusing on her charge towards the blue man.

Jan zipped out of the way of the hand waving at her. While she had learned that she wouldn't really be smushed and turned into itty Jan-bits if hit while she was small, it still wasn't any fun to be slapped or stepped-on. The tiny girl would have made another zap-filled lunge at Shalimar had she not met with an unexpected... something. One moment Wasp was preparing to zip up into the trees again, the next she let out an odd-sounding gasp heard only by those on the comm as she collided into something she was sure hadn't been there.

"Ow!" Lexa couldn't help but cry out as some large bug hurtled into her from Shalimar's direction. "What the hell Shal?"

Shalimar didn't acknowledge the comment, still stalking the blue feral in the trees.

Arlee, however, turned towards the spot where Lexa's voice had come from and, leaving Brennan and Refrax to use their long-range abilities to take care of the blonde and the blue man, hurried in Lexa's direction to berate her for speaking and possibly blowing the only advantage her powers gave them.

From the spot where she had fallen on the ground, Jan blinked. She had hit something that wasn't there, and then there had been a voice from where no one had been... oh, someone was even more unnoticeable than she was! Sneaky! And no fair pulling her own 'you can't see me' trick on her! Jan wasn't quite sure where her invisible adversary was now, but she caught note of someone heading in the direction the invisible person had been in. Taking to the air once more, Jan approached Arlee from behind. She became full-sized only long enough to deliver a stunning zap to the other woman, then quickly shrank again, giving anyone who might have happened to see her the impression that they'd only imagined her or were dealing with a teleporter or someone who could become invisible.

Arlee fell in a heap, knocked out by the zap.

Hank was moving around the perimeter, taking mental notes on how the adversaries were using their abilities. Despite their shoddy organization, he had to admit to being impressed with the level of teamwork the fugitives were showing. A scent caught his nose, that of another feral mutant, and Hank could immediately feel the predatory eyes burning into his back.

In mid-swing Beast reversed his grip and swung safely to rest on a branch a short distance above the mutant. The young woman looked surprised that she'd been detected, despite the fact the wind was in Hank's favor. Looking down at her, "I don't suppose you'd consider turning around and going back to prison, hmm?"

"Your senses are obviously better than your brains," Shalimar scoffed. "I can't go back to a place I've never been." She was doing this so Brennan wouldn't have to go back to prison. "Wanna dance?" she asked with a toothy smile, and launched herself at him.






Kurt had his arm up to protect his eyes from Refrax's heat vision, but that still left him three limbs and a tail free to attack with, and he was using them all to full effect. "You are not going to win this fight, you know."

Refrax and Brennan had switched targets without a word, Refrax going for the blue man and Brennan the blonde woman, but neither had counted on the blue man being a teleporter who could close the distance of their long-range attacks in an instant, rendering the tactic useless. Both stopped shooting to regroup so they wouldn't accidently injure each other. As Refrax tried to counter the limbs and tail attacking him, Brennan tried to get a hand on the wily guy to shock him unconscious. "Don't know unless you try," Brennan pointed out, cursing as the blue man dropped Refrax before Brennan could get ahold of him.

Having put the fires out, Jesse returned to his normal density, clothes burned away, and moved to help Brennan with the blue man, trying to keep an eye on the blonde as he ran.

Amara moved quickly to intercept Jesse, flames curling through the air and cutting off his path through to Kurt and Brennan. She hurried to actually fill the space with her presence rather than just a wall of fire, the nimbus of fire that surrounded her flaring up.

Unable to tell if he was winning or not, Hank wrestled with the other feral, doing his best to avoid his adversary by swinging through the branches. Noticing the wall of fire off to his left, Hank saw his opening and siezed a rather springy branch, letting his momentum carry him forward. Having to roll backwards in order to see Shalimar, Hank timed his attack perfectly and let the branch go just as the other feral was in mid-air.

The branch sprang back, smacking his foe across the face and stunning her for a moment- her momentum suddenly directed downward toward the forest floor. Immediately, Hank sprang into action, pushing off another branch with his feet to propel himself toward the falling fiend until he grasped her by the belt and took hold of another branch to finish his plan. Using centripetal force, Hank swung around the tree, villain in hand, and let go with just the right exertion of force to send the feral flying toward her comrades in the clearing. Beast took a moment to watch, hoping for a collision that could buy Amara some ground.

Shalimar crashed into Jesse before she could regain her sense of direction and make her feet work properly. Sprawled out under his large form, which was thankfully at its normal density, she pushed at him to move.

"Don't you have feline qualities? What happened to cats landing on their feet?" Jesse inquired with a wry smirk, rolling onto his back, slightly dazed by their collision.

"We're gonna land in jail if we don't do something real fast," she muttered, crawling to her hands and knees and trying to get her wind back.


***


"Guys, there's someone invisible around here," Jan alerted her teammates. "This person could be anywhere!" Jan began to scout the area, moving slower than she had before in order to avoid another literal run-in. Her hands stretched out in front of her, the insect-sized woman sent out small, "feeler" bursts of her special bio-electricity in order to see if she'd hit anyone. Her teammates were quite capable of fighting their adversaries, but a sneak attack from the Invisible Girl wouldn't be good for anyone. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" she said, even knowing that her unseen opponent wouldn't be able to hear her tiny voice.

"Invisible, fantastic," Amara muttered under her breath, not quite intending it to go to the group, even though it had. Thanks to Hank, Jesse had been unable to get through to help ambush Kurt, but there were still more people to take down. Amara paused just long enough to sweep her gaze around the area, trying to work out where all their opponents had gotten to. She spotted one last one, the male feral that had joined the group. Shit. She started to move in that direction, not convinced she would catch him in time.

Mad Dog had been prowling the edges of the fight, taking in the powers and abilities of everyone, including his new 'pack'. There was someone he couldn't quite see, but who he certainly could smell, zipping around the combatants and letting out bursts of electricity.

"Looks like old Mad Dog is gonna be useful after all," he giggled to himself, manoevering behind the bug-girl and clapping his hands around her.

Jan gasped as the world around her went dark. "Oh no you don't!" she scolded. Instinctively she did the same thing she had done years ago when Julio had "caught" her when she was stuck after shrinking for the first time and sparks of electricity leaped from her hands. However, this didn't seem to phase her captor, and Jan feared for attempted squishing. "You asked for it, buddy!" she warned. "Get ready for the attack of the Five Foot Four Woman!" Even as she spoke, her body began to expand, growing much too large for Mad Dog to hold in his hands. The force of her growth forced his hand open, and Jan heard the sound of bones breaking.

Mad Dog howled as the sudden growth shattered his hands before forcing them apart. "You bitch!" he growled, foam flecking his jaw as he lunged at her to bite her throuat out.

It was at this point that Amara arrived, letting lose with a blast of magma to knock Mad Dog away from Jan. Just in time, thank god, and while it was hard to tell, there was a bit of a smile on Amara's face as she did so.

"You okay Wasp?"

"Yep!" Jan replied. "Thanks for the save!" She looked at Mad Dog and shook her head sadly. "That's no way to treat a lady. Sorry, you're nowhere as cute as my boyfriend, and he's the only one who gets to put his hands all over me."

Mad Dog's only reply was to whimper as he lay in a crumpled heap from Amara's blast, smelling strongly of burnt hair. Some days it just didn't pay to get out of bed.






With Refrax down, Kurt had turned his attention to Brennan. The difficulty here was going to be in laying a hand on him without getting shocked... but fortunately, Kurt was very practised at the necessary kind of in-quickly-and-gone-again fighting. He punched Brennan in the face and vanished, only to reappear for another blow a moment later.

After watching the bug-thing drop Arlee, Lexa had hurried into the clearing to get away from it, hoping her invisibility would cause it to lose her location, and she headed over to Brennan to help him with the teleporter. When he reappeared to land the second blow on Brennan, causing the electrokinetic to expell a breath like a balloon she hit him with a punch of her own and then danced away, hoping he wouldn't find her. Unfortunately physical combat wasn't really her strong suit and she felt like she'd hurt her hand more than she'd hurt him, but she managed not to cry out.

Noticing that Gregor was going over to help Shalimar and Jesse, Lexa stayed with Brennan to try and help him.

Hank pressed the attack, somersaulting out of the tree and into the forest-mixing-zone near a nest of quail-like birds who took to the sky with a startled squawk. Moving with both hands and feet, Hank quickly covered the distance he'd thrown the female feral and jumped onto the back of the massive man, using a quick jujitsu technique to bring him back down on-top of his comrade - himself hoping off at the last moment to land in a crouch a few feet away.

Shalimar had cleared herself of the falling Gregor with her feral reflexes, but Jesse hadn't been as lucky, going down under his comrade with an "oof!" He shifted his density and let Gregor fall through his body, picking himself up wearily and going brick-like at the sight of the enormous blue creature before him.

When her communicator beeped in her ear, Shalimar felt like weeping with joy. The damn transport was finally here! She looked up, but of course she couldn't see it- she'd spared no expense in hiring it and one of her dealbreakers had been silencers and cloaking ability. She could smell the engines, however, over the smell of the smoke from the smouldering fires Jesse had put out, and knew she could gauge its location that way.

She sprang away from the blue man, who was being entertained by Gregor and Jesse, and headed over to Brennan and the other blue man. "Time to go, Mulwray," she said as she leapt towards him. He was her first priority, because without him on the jet to use his powers against their adversaries they would have an even smaller chance at escaping than they did now.

Brennan took a shot to the head by the blue teleporter and crumpled, and Shalimar took advantage of Lexa taking a swing at him to bound over, grab Brennan by the jumpsuit, and leap straight up into the cargo hold of the jet waiting for her. It would give the element of surprise away, since they would know the jet was here now but as soon as she and Brennan were aboard she barked out an order for it to climb higher and hoped the X-Men would lose sight of it again. It circled around while she slapped Brennan back to consciousness. "Cover me," she ordered, and he shot her a death glare which she took to interpret as him understanding. When the plane swooped in again she jumped out and back into the fight.

Kurt was going hand to hand with Lexa, using the same technique as against Brennan and using every inch of his slight hearing advantage to keep track of her even when she went invisible. "Wasp or Caldera", he called out, "can either of you do anything to disable their vehicle?"

"Sure!" Jan answered Kurt through the comm. "I can give it a try, at least, mess things up in there. Unless they've got, like, an invulnerable person flying the plane or something I should be able to walk right up to that console and zap the hell out of it!"

The density manipulator, meanwhile, was giving Hank a bit more trouble and simply proving that he needed more time practicing in the danger room than tinkering with subtle improvements. Fumbling with his utility belt, Hank took out several tranquilizing darts and threw them at his new target. The female feral had disappeared in the confusion, but he was trying to keep his senses sharp in case she was trying to flank him. Hank smiled as the darts passed through the phased foe and stuck in his large companion who was finally getting up- one more down.

Shalimar hissed out an annoyed breath as Gregor went down, surveying the scene before her. There was no way she could get everyone up to the plane, assuming the person her keen hearing had picked up saying she was going to 'zap the hell out of it' didn't do exactly that and make escape completely impossible. Jesse was up against the blue feral and the other blue X-Man was tangling with Lexa. There were X-Men free to help both of their comrades now though, and chances were slim Shalimar could even get one of her still-conscious teammates clear of them. The chances of her getting both were almost nil. So who to get first?

It was a decision Shalimar didn't want to make, but because she was Magnetic North's leader in Adam's absence she made the decision without breaking stride, going to help Jesse with the blue feral and leaving Lexa on her own, hoping that the woman would have sense enough to disengage and use her powers to her advantage to hide somewhere in the woods until the plane could catch up to her later.

While Jesse fought with the blue feral, shifting his density from brick to vapour every time he went from offense to defense, Shalimar tried to sneak up behind him and grab for the creature's belt, hoping to render him weaponless.

It probably would have worked too, had it not been for Hank battle awareness that had been honed after years of field missions like this. The second he felt a tug on his utility belt, Hank twisted around, bringing his foot through the density manipulator and grabbing the female feral's wrist. With a wry chuckle, he continued the spin using his momentum to throw her forward and toward the manipulator.

Jesse phased out again as Shal was thrown towards him and he had time to chuckle as he turned back into a brick and went to tangle with the feral again. "You and I have been coming together more today than we have in weeks," he smirked at Shal as she suddenly jumped skyward.

Kurt had got a good grip on Lexa's hair, visible or not, and was holding on like grim death, so she was having some trouble disengaging. "If you stop fighting", he told her matter-of-factly, "this will hurt a good deal less."

Since he obviously knew she was there, Lexa figured there was no point trying to keep quiet anymore. "I think jail's going to hurt a good deal more than this," she muttered grimly, still fighting. Brennan was shooting blasts of electricity near them, but Lexa guessed he didn't want to chance hitting her instead of her opponent because he wasn't getting nearly close enough. Lexa aimed a kick at the teleporter's knee as she tried to wrench his fingers out of her hair.

He took the kick - fortunately on his good leg - without buckling, and grabbed her foot with his free hand. The next moment, he'd located her head, and released her foot to punch her.

Lexa hadn't had time to regain her balance from having her foot held before the punch was delivered, and being off-balance combined with the blow had her crashing to the ground, where her head struck the earth and everything went black.





Jan flew up to the plane, tiny so she would remain unseen. The plane was being defended by Brennan, she noted, taking in the large streaks of electricity he was sending forth to try to attack her teammates and prevent them from coming after the plane. Won't work with me! Unless they knew they were fighting an invisible or near-invisible adversary, people didn't tend to attack things they couldn't see. Jan just had to be careful and avoid Brennan's electricity, and into the plane she went.

Being tiny wasn't much good at this point, though, so Jan grew to full-size, standing behind Brennan. Not quite sure how his power worked, Jan held her hands out close to him and let loose with a large burst of biolectricity from each hand. She didn't want to hurt him, but she figured it would probably take a bit more than her normal "dose" to bring him down.

Because of Brennan's mutation the electrical charge he'd received didn't hurt him, though the fact that someone had snuck onto the plane to try and attack him had caused quite a shock mentally. He whirled around and delivered a quick right cross to the woman who'd tried to zap him. "'Might work better if I wasn't an electrokinetic," he pointed out to her. "Unless I'm just special. Let's see, does it work on you?" He shot a beam of electricity at her in return.

Jan hadn't expected the guy to not be affected at all by her attack, and not expecting to have a strong punch thrown her way, she crumped to the floor. Stunned, there was nothing she could do to evade the beam directed at her. So that's what it feels like was the thought that floated through her head. She wanted to shrink, that's what she always did to protect herself, but something was wrong and she remained over five feet tall. Jan felt like she was receiving multiple shocks and could barely move; the fingers on one hand twitched as she tried to stretch her hand out, and tiny zaps sparked on and off.

Chuckling to himself at the ease of it all, Brennan hauled the young woman up by collar and belt and hefted her like a duffel bag out the cargo bay door of the plane arrogant enough to stand by and watch as she fell towards the earth, waving goodbye to her. "Better luck next time," he cackled.

Hearing the cackling, Shalimar looked up at the sky, trying to place Brennan and the camouflaged plane. Instead, she saw a woman from the X-Men's team falling to earth. "Shit, Brennan!" she cursed, bounding upwards. The X-Men weren't killing her teammates, so it didn't seem right to Shalimar that her teammates kill X-Men, and the woman obviously wasn't capable of stopping her own fall.

She intercepted the falling girl a little roughly, but Shalimar managed to catch her around the waist. She wasn't exactly prepared for the zaps that were emitting from the young woman, however, and when one of the shocks electrified her nervous system she found herself letting go with a cry as if she'd gripped a live wire, sending the X-Man tumbling to the earth, though she pushed her towards the trees in hope that the canopy would break the younger woman's fall.

Jan plummeted down through a treetop, her nerves on fire from Brennan's electricity interacting with her own bioelectricity in an unexpected and quite painful way. Her fingers reached out, trying to grab onto the branch of a tree, but Brennan's punch and her body's reaction to his electricity made her unable to be in complete control of herself at the moment. Small bursts of electricity continued to leap forth from her hands, and her fingers slipped. Luckily, she was much closer to the ground than she had been at the moment Brennan tossed her off the plane. Had she been tiny, perhaps she would have been able to catch herself and fly away or at least slow her descent, but she was a full-grown, adult-sized woman at the moment and her flying abilities were not what they were when she was small. A moment later, Jan hit the ground with a thud and a crunch, crying out as the sound of bones snapping could be heard.

After Amara and Jan had dealt with Mad Dog, Amara had been making her way to the plane, slower than Jan. By the time she made it to the area she was just in time to see Jan crash to the ground. She gasped, hurrying to move to help her fallen teammate.

"Beast!" She said sharply into the comm. "Wasp is down, she just... fell. I think something broke."

The distraction of an injured team-mate was enough to give Hank a moment's pause, which ended up being just enough time for the density manipulator to land a blow. As fortune would have it, the punch sent him toward Wasp and despite what felt like a couple of bruised, if not broken, ribs, it had not been bad enough that he could not use his reflexes to recover from the fall. Turning his attention toward where he could be of most use Hank hurried over to Wasp's fallen form. He quickly assessed his patient, realizing that his awareness of the surrounding fight was dwindling with each passing second.

With the blue feral checking on his injured teammate, Shalimar wasted no time getting Jesse to reduce his density so she could fly him up to the plane, where Brennan clapped him on the back and sat him down in one of the seats before returning to stare out the cargo bay door with Shalimar. "Going back for more?" he inquired.

The female feral shook her head. The teleporter had Lexa, who was no longer invisible, while Gregor, Arlee, Refrax, and MadDog had been rounded up already. The injured X-Man was being looked at. "We need to cut our losses and go, now. Before they come back with a vengeance for you tossing that woman off the plane," she added with a snarl.

"What about Lexa?" Jesse mumbled from his seat, head between his legs presumably to try and clear his head from the beating he'd taken at the hands of the blue feral. "We free Mulwray only to lose her? We're no better off than we were before."

Frowning, Shalimar headed up to the cockpit to instruct the pilot. "We'll get her back," she muttered as the cargo door closed and the plane sped away from the clearing. "We'll get them all back. The jailbreak scenario we just executed wasn't the only one we had on the brainstorming board, after all."