xp_logs | FWTM: Resolution

Doug, Sofia and MA spike the internal connection to the nuclear authorization, but are not unopposed.

The situation room was a mess, and smelled like vomit from the effects of the sudden near vacuum that had been created. They ignored the sprawled command staff of the Indian military, as the communications centre was active. The nuclear arms of the country couldn't actually be unlocked from this station, but it sent out a clear command that allowed them to be unlocked in the various other control bunkers. It was an older system, but still worked reasonably well.

Even as they breached the doors, there were telltale sounds of troops on the way, as the internal guard moved to protect the generals, albeit too late now. At the head were two members of the Imperial Guard, distinctive in their uniforms and wary on approach.

As the doors opened, Doug unholstered his pistol and squeezed off several shots down the hallway at the approaching troops and Imperial Guard. The shots were essentially unaimed, and intended to make their approach even more cautious, buying himself and his teammates precious seconds to get inside the situation room and set up a defense as they set to locking out Neramani's nuclear capability. Any injuries he might cause were entirely secondary, and he ducked through the doorway and made a beeline for a console without pausing to observe the effects of his fire.

The Guard paused with the shots, and several came back in response, as the handful of troops with them returned fire. In the corners of the hallway, deep shadows began to snake and growing, like long tendrils reaching out and grasping at them.

"If you're done trying to get the one person here who can prevent nuclear war killed," Sofia said scathingly, using her anger to fling the line of Guard into the wall behind them as she took cover with the door frame. "We're going to take our job back now."

The wall that grew up to block the doorway was made of stone, solid and heavy and thick enough to stick out past the edges of the wall. Marie-Ange backed away from the door, crushing a card in one hand. "That is not going to last. But it will buy us time to plan." Her voice wavered, and worry was visible on her face. If she was blinded by those shadows, she was near useless - her power required her to be able to see clearly.

"Everyone's a critic," Doug muttered sotto voce as he kicked aside the chair at the console he wanted. The system was essentially a standalone, which was why it was so vital that they be physically in the control room. Neramani would naturally have some amount of remote access, but it would certainly be through heavily shielded and dedicated lines that would not connect to anything else.

"Thankfully," he said to himself as he brought up a command line and began executing a series of instructions, "it's much easier to destroy than create." He paused for a second at the unintentional irony, given the tools of destruction he was attempting to keep from being used, then slapped the enter key.

"How about a nice game of keep-away?"

Shadows began to loom in the room, and suddenly a figure shifted in from the dark pools of shadow, striking Marie-Ange with a blow before the woman could react. The woman stepped back into the shadow and disappeared, only to reappear on the other side of the room, this time with a kick that scythed out Doug's legs from under him. Before they could react, Doug was pulled into the shadow.

"We have your friend, Americans. If you don't want him shot through the head in the next ten seconds, you will remove this wall." A female voice in British accented English called through the door.

The wall was down before the woman was finished speaking. It had begun to waver as Marie-Ange reeled from the blow, and sublimated quickly, leaving only the slightest trace of ectoplasm on the ground.

The way through was preceded by a shaft of intense light, forcing them back from the door as the two Guardsman stepped through. Two soldiers held Doug, one of them with a pistol to the back of his head. As the women cleared the door they stopped, looking at the carnage.

"If they're dead, so are you." She hissed.

Teleporters. Doug grimaced as he racked his brain for a way out of the situation. If it was just one soldier, or two soldiers but without the gun, his chances would have been much better. But the 'stumble hard' trope that worked in the movies would be likely to earn him a quick bullet through the brainpan. His eyes flicked to Sofia and Marie-Ange, hoping that someone had a better plan than him. All he needed was a moment of distraction or the like to get the immediate threat of the gun away from him long enough to do something.

"Oh, did you know them?" Sofia asked. A glimmer of amber light made a halo off the tendriling curls of her hair as one of the men, slumped over his station, rose marionettely, giving Nightside a comic salute. He floated over, his arms outstretched as if asking for a hug and Sofia smiled nastily, watching the reactions of her opponents. "So you do. Say hello, it's only polite."

Even trained soldiers would gape at the horrifying sight of one of their comrades being used in such a way, if only for a second. That second was all the time that was needed.

The blond youth, armor and weapon a dull black, that appeared next to Doug was silent, and only lasted as long as it took for his sword to slice through the arm of the soldier holding the gun. Gun, and hand, and forearm fell to the floor, and the image faded, the material it was made of mixing with the blood that spilled from the wounded soldier.

Doug recognized the image from one of the hand-drawn tarot cards that Marie-Ange had created that were inspired by their friends and acquaintances from Xavier's and the Snow Valley Center. But to see a dark-armored duplicate of himself slice a man's arm off was still extremely disturbing (if not quite as much as whatever Sofia had done to the corpse that was traipsing around in midair). He recovered much quicker than the soldiers, though, his long exposure to strange apparitions from his relationship with Marie-Ange standing him in good stead.

The one-armed soldier already clutching at his bleeding stump was downgraded as a secondary threat. It would take precious seconds for him to regain his focus, if he managed at all, and the gun that had been at the back of Doug's head clattered to the floor and under a chair. The soldier still holding Doug had his attention split between the puppeteered corpse of the technician and the severed arm of his comrade. Doug used that to his own advantage, yanking hard to pull his opponent off-balance, while producing a knife from a sheath in his vest with his freed hand and stabbing the sergeant (Doug translated the rank insignia as his brain captured every detail of the man's face) deep in the belly.

As the shocked man sank to his knees, Doug yanked the pistol from the weakening soldier's holster, and shifted to pull the trigger twice in rapid succession to put a bullet through the face of each. Continuing the movement, he crouched behind a console to break line of sight and assess the reactions of the pair of mutants opposing them. He'd be ready for the shadow-jumping trick again, even if he wasn't entirely certain how to counteract it.

Caught between an armed man, two mutants, and no support, Manta and Nightside exchanged weary looks. They had been sent to secure the military commanders, who lay dead in piles around them. The launch authority had been spiked, so that even if they wanted to communicate authorization, it would take days to work around the system and properly verify it. On top of all of that, the Guards' comm chatter had gone strange, including a 'stand down' order from Dacoit. They both raised their hands in an age old gesture of surrender.