xp_logs | First We Take Manhattan (Reply)

X-Force begins their attack deep in the heart of New Delhi, with just one target: Prime Minister D. Ken Neramani.

New Delhi was seething. While few knew of the swirling march towards war that was taking place, it was impossible not to catch the hints of rumour in the air. It was as if a single breath had been collectively taken, held, and was now waiting for the sign to exhale as one. Raisina Hill was no different, every window in the clustered government buildings lit, despite the late hour. It made for an electric panorama from the helicopter, which even now was starting to descend. Remy leaned towards the window from his perch in the co-pilot's seat, watching as the Secretariat Building grew infront of them.

"Three minutes." He said over his headset, making a few adjustments to the controls. Neither he or Wanda were particularly good helicopter pilots, but they had an advantage tonight that they didn't have to worry about landing it today.

Under the gloves she sported, Wanda's hands were damp with sweat despite her calm and light touch on the controls in front of her. She had been doubtful of the idea of putting her behind the wheel of anything but had simply nodded and climbed into the co-pilot chair next to Remy. Her powers had kept them from flying through any serious dangerous patches and, as they headed towards their destination, she was able to focus on what was to come more than helping to fly the damned thing.

"The lack of chatter seems to indicate that we probably still have not been sighted," Wanda commented. Probably being the operative word.

Amanda fiddled yet again with the headset, knee jiggling nervously. She'd been uncharacteristically quiet during the flight, eyes fixed on the expanse of city below. Now, at Wanda's words, she jerked her gaze away, back to the occupants of the helicopter. "Well, the lack of rockets and missiles and crap is kinda reassuring," she added into the mic.

"Yeah, until we decide to do their job for them." Sarah muttered darkly from her seat. "What did I do on my spring break? Well, despite my issues with heights, I rode in a helicopter that deliberately fell out of the sky. The explosion was awesome."

"If you can't take the joke, you shouldn't have taken the job." Remy said with a kind of grim humour. His plan was a desperate one, relying on audacity and speed to work. One mistake, and all of them would be dead for nothing. They had to trust that the X-Men could hold the line long enough for them to take India's nuclear response out of the equation temporarily, and get to the rotting brain of the state.

"So, population of over a billion. Over twelve and a half million people in dat city below us, and all of dem hanging on de knife edge due to one insane leader. If dere was ever a better description of politics den dat." Remy leaned against the open side bay of the helicopter, staring at the city. "Dere's part of de plan dat Remy hasn't explained yet."

"Well, with three minutes to go, you're cutting it a bit fine, aren't you?" Amanda replied, gaze drawn yet again to the city below. She couldn't keep her eyes off it.

"Oui. You going to have to hurry to get to the building." Remy said, and as she looked at him questioningly, shoved her out the open door, hurtling towards the city itself.

"You fucking son of a..." The chain of expletives were carried away by the wind as the small blonde figure plummeted towards the ground.

Sarah's eyes widened, and she instinctively leaned towards the door with a shout before returning back to her chair a little unsteadily. She growled, "LeBeau, you fucking bastard, I hate your plans. She had better be okay, or I'm going to find a nice little pile of rubble here to hang your innards on as a fucking ornamental wall hanging."

"She'll be fine." Remy muttered, watching the falling figure as long as possible, hoping his gamble would pay off.

Amanda, for her part, was doing her best not to scream all the way down, instead concentrating on her mutant power as much as she could. Come on, New Delhi, be nice, what's an invasion and occupation or two between friends... The street loomed in front of her and she instinctively flung her arms across her face before the impact.

There was a kind of "schloop!" noise and Amanda disappeared into the street, like a pebble being sucked into a mud puddle.

A second passed and Wanda remembered to breath again as she cursed the entire situation under her breath in three different languages. "~I'm getting too old for this shit,~" she muttered in Rom, even as she leaned more on the controls because they were getting closer to their own destination. "Let's get this over and done with," she continued in English, voice firming up over the last few words.

"Nothing like a smooth landing." Either taken ironically or literally, Remy's statement was perfectly correct. The helicopter had angled down sharply, hurtling towards the grounds. Wanda locked the controls and stepped to the door. Remy helped her strap on the short-reefed paraglider harness, and then slipped into his own. He nodded to Sarah, who merely connected an extra set of straps on her eight point secure seat. The plan was simple. Once the helicopter hit, it would draw attention long enough for Remy and Wanda to touch down inside the main perimeter security. With her healing factor, Sarah could ride the helicopter all the way in, giving them an attack profile from another direction. It wasn't the best plan, but on short notice and facing major security, it was the best they could do.

Remy held Wanda's hand as she deployed the parasail, and shoved her as it caught the wind, pulling her out into the air. He did the same, bracing against the jolt on the harness as he was yanked into the night air. His foils tangled slightly and there was a moment that he thought he might be dropped from two hundred metres up, but the sail evened out, and the dull black parachute billowed invisibly in the dusk sky.

What was only about a minute of falling felt like forever, and Sarah forced herself not to grip her harness on the way down. She wouldn't be much good if she broke all her fingers in the fall. Just relax, she told herself, it's not like the fall will kill
you. Seconds later, the helicopter met the ground, jostling her violently as the doomed machine come to a complete stop in a twisted pile of metal.

As the helicopter's twisted frame was spitting and coming to a final rest, Wanda landed hard on the ground well beyond the crash zone. The wind had buffeted her hard on the way down and she'd barely been able to get her feet under her before the ground met her. Feet skidded for purchase before her knees hit with a bruising impact and she slide for another foot or two before coming to a full stop.

Trying to regulate her breathing, she frantically stripped off the parasail - feeling, almost stupidly, like it was strangling her - and she tossed it away from her. She had enough of her wits about her to scuttle off to the side with it, keeping an eye out for Remy.

Remy had cut his 'chute early, dropping cat-like the final thirty feet or so. The shattered helicopter had the desired effect, as the crash reverberated through the building and guards began to converge on it. Sarah's orders had been clear; come in with the helicopter, dummy up after the crash for as long as it took her healing factor to catch up, and while the guards were looking one way, hit them from behind. They wouldn't have long before the Imperial Guard would be on their way.

Remy pulled a deck of cards from his pocket, fanned them out, and tossed with deadly precision. The windows of the Secretariat Building had been reinforced, but the kinetic charge from the cards blew them in with a crash. Hopefully the other two teams were moving, he thought, as armed guards began to close in.

***

The brilliant thing about Wanda's powers were that they capable of working either on a short range or a long range scale. She could either be in the thick of things or simply be in line of sight in order to do her job. Though sometimes the situation simply took the choice away from her. She had thought to reach higher ground in order to play havoc with the ground forces in an attempt to provide enough cover for the others to make their move...

But the soldiers she was now in the midst of were attempting to make it quite difficult indeed.

In a group of five men, Wanda flashed in and out like the knife she wielded in her hand. The red circles distorted the blood as weapons and internal organs failed as one, as the bladed weapon dug for purchase and then slipped out again as silent as it had gone in. It certainly wasn't easy work but it was one she had grown used to.

***

Sarah felt like she had been hit by a bus. Or, had fallen out of the sky in a helicopter. With a groan, she fumbled with bloody hands against the harness that kept her pinned to her seat in the wreckage, and crawled out of the opening which was the collapsed door Amanda had fallen, no, been pushed out of not five minutes before. She heard shouting up ahead, and bringing herself slowly to her feet, began moving unsteadily away from the helicopter. I am the cockroach of the mutant world...

***

"Any minute now..." Remy muttered, as he forced back the armed men with a combination of kinetic explosions and his own ferocious martial abilities. A new group of men appeared, and at the head was exactly the man he wanted to see; Dacoit. The head of the Imperial Guard was in his combat outfit, leathers not dissimilar to the X-Men's, although far less durable and more brightly coloured. The man took in the crash quickly, and launched himself into the air to hover over the scene. Wanda was visible as a whirlwind of death in the midst of the courtyard, and Remy had taken the opportunity to fade towards the crash site.

"Surrender now. This attack on the government will be resisted with lethal force if necessary." He spoke in clear accented English. With only one obvious attacker, that was not a foe to be concerned with, no matter what her powers.

There was a ripple in the ground behind him, the concrete shuddering as if it had suddenly gone liquid, and a blonde head emerged. The rest of Amanda followed, unscathed from her surprise bailout, her eyes blazing gold. Standing on tip-toe, she tapped Dacoit on the shoulder.

"Excuse me," she said almost politely to the Imperial Guardsman. "You're on the wrong side." And with that she wound up in an almost comically-obvious movement and punched him in the jaw.

The blow was pathetic, the kind of thing that wouldn't even register against Daciot's super strength and invulnerability. Instead, it launched him sideways and straight through the second and third floor of the building, shattering stone and steel as the Guardsman was flung through the air.

"Dat's our distraction." Remy muttered, as he reached the helicopter and ducked his head in. "Marrow, you alive in dere?" He said, reasonably sure that she was.

Sarah had made it a few steps away from the helicopter before she nearly collapsed. She had at least made it behind a large piece of debris from the crash, so she wasn't out in the open as she let her body heal itself. She had been sitting for what felt like a lifetime when she heard Remy's voice over by the helicopter. She stood up, pleased that she no longer felt like she was going to fall over, and glared at him. "I really hate you."

"Dat's what dey all say. Let's go." The disappeared from the area, as the soldiers tried to deal with Wanda. Amanda had Dacoit busy, and their distraction should have bought the others a distraction to get inside. It was time to concentrate on their mission, and they moved like ghosts inside the great building and towards their target.