GBOS: Shakey Ground

[x-gambit.livejournal.com]

Meggan and Megan run across a Guardsman, and Catseye's timely intervention helps them deal with the threat.



The sound of gunfire erupting around the camp, and the muffled 'whoomph' of explosions was enough to root them all in place, as the small cluster of Red Cross volunteers watched incredulously as chaos broke out around the camp. It came out of the blue; one moment they were sharing around bottled water before starting on the next shelther, the next they were underattack as refugees began to scream and flee in all directions. Men dressed like any of the others, but carrying compact automatic weapons moved with military like precision, belying their appearance. Already, they'd shot and killed two unfortunates who'd tried to escape across their path.

Dave shoved them back, closer to the tent. His face was very white. "Shit! We're being attacked!"

"Who the fuck - terrorists?"

"Who knows. Look, try and hide here. I'll get help." Before they could respond, he'd puzhed them towards the tent door and broke off in the other direction, back towards the compound headquarters. He was almost across the open area when the earth under him suddenly pushed up, like a wave breaking in the dirt, and he was knocked off his feet. Not far from him, a grey faced man nodded with satisfaction and motioned to one of his men, who deftly shot the young man in the back of the head where he lay.

"~Sweep the area. Focus on the Westerners for your targets. They will... confuse things more effectively.~" He said to his men, in a language they didn't understand.

"What's happening?" Pixie asked, her skin turning warm and her bottle of water slipping out of her fingers. The roof of the barracks nearby, just so nearly completed and lending her and Meggan its shade, was shaking. Her legs were shaking a bit, too. She looked to Meggan in panic. "Hide? Here?"

Meggan shook her head, bewildered, as she didn’t know what was happening either. “Hiding sounds good.” She looked quickly around the area. Meggan finally pointed to a spot a little bit away from the barracks, while trying not to stumble too badly from the shaking. “Maybe over there, instead of here?” All she knew was that if the barracks were shaking, then it wasn’t a good idea to hide in them. If this was some kind of aftershock, everything could come down on top of them.

"Okay, let's go together," said Pixie, trying to go to that calm place in her mind that Laurie had taught her. Workers were running in scattered directions. Where were the other kids?
The two girls moved quickly but carefully toward the area away from the barracks and other tall structures that could fall on them. The shaking was already dying down, but the danger was in no way lessening. The smell of smoke was in the air--was there a fire?

The smell of smoke was definitely getting stronger by the second. If things were burning out of control, they didn’t have anything to put it out with. When the shaking stopped, Meggan carefully took another step, before glancing at Pixie. “Okay. If there’s not another aftershock right away, we go find the others?” She was just as worried about everyone else.

"Sounds good. Let's wait like... 2 minutes?" Pixie suggested nervously. She had never been in an earthquake before and wasn't sure exactly what the time span was for an aftershock, but a couple minutes seemed reasonable. She crouched down beside Meggan and covered herself with her arms. Hey, it was what you were supposed to do in bear attacks, right? She peeked around at the scene at hand, trying to find a glimpse of someone she recognized.

“That sounds about right. 2 minutes it is, then.” Or was it supposed to be 5 minutes? Right now, Meggan just couldn’t remember, if she had ever known for certain. And levitating through an aftershock probably wouldn’t do any good for either of them, if things happened to be falling in their general direction.

Pixie waited until she thought two minutes was up. The scene hadn't changed much, though the smell of smoke was still getting stronger.
"Let's go," she said to the other girl. "Where do you think the others would have gone for safety?"

Meggan nodded, carefully peeking around a corner to take in the damage before they started off. She thought before answering, realizing that the others might have scattered, too. “I’m not sure. Maybe where everyone was given their jobs, since everyone knows that spot. Or they headed for areas not as likely to fall over in an aftershock, like we did.”

And if that were the case, they might end up just wandering around until they bumped into somebody they knew. Not much of a plan, but it was still better than nothing.

"When I was a kid and we went someplace big on holiday, my mom always told my sister and I to meet up at the park entrance if we got lost," Pixie thought aloud as they picked their way across the ground toward the station where they had started. "It makes sense to me to go back to the beginning... hopefully the others think so too." She was getting all chattery now that the initial shock had worn off and she was just plain anxious. She suddenly felt kind of lost, and was grateful for Meggan's level-headedness.

A lot of talking was good, in Meggan’s opinion, and she gave a small smile to the other girl to encourage her to continue. More talking meant more ideas for what to do to find everyone else. She just hoped everyone was okay, and that they found them before any other aftershocks, if there were any coming.

If there was anything in their path, they could always float over it—while hoping nothing happened to fall on their heads, of course. Meggan shook her head for a moment when she suddenly realized her own special brand of dealing lately was rapidly becoming survive now and do what she could to help, get really upset later when there was more time and they were safe. “Oh, I hope so, too. If we get there, and nobody else is there, and they’re not there within an hour or so? Maybe we wait a little bit longer, and then…try to think of another spot they might be. Like a medical area, I guess."

"Ohh, the medical area. If they're hurt. Watch out for that wire," said Pixie as she did a flutter-hop over one of the electrical wires they had so carefully put up earlier. At least, it could have been one that they had worked on. "I hope they're not hurt," she added, purposefully vague with the pronoun. She didn't want to imagine anyone in particular being in pain, as if picturing it would make it come true. That would be some mutant power, though, to be able to control the fabric of reality with your mind. No one had powers like that, right?

"Hey... you don't think a... mutant did this, do you? The quake, I mean. No one is that strong, right?"

Given her occasional drinking of electricity from wall sockets in the past, Meggan didn’t think the downed wiring would hurt her. Just in case, though, she levitated over it. For all she knew, that was too much, and she didn’t do it as much as she used to.

At Pixie’s question, she almost winced at the thought—she hadn’t thought of that. “Oh, I hope not.” She stepped over some broken ground carefully, before she added, “Some might be able to, yes. I don’t know if they’re strong enough for this.” She offered a tiny smile, continuing, “Let’s try to think that it’s natural for now?”

"Right. Wow, my first earthquake. I guess I never expected to be in one. Hey, New York doesn't get hurricanes or tornadoes or anything like that, right?"
They were nearing the station where they had started earlier that day and been given their assignments. It looked intact, but at first glance Pixie couldn't tell if anyone was near.

"~I thought I saw two girls in the distance.~" The ground rumbled, and both women turned to see the grey-skinned man that had ordered Dave's casual execution step from behind a tent. He smiled as a shockwave knocked them both off their feet, and stood regarding them for a moment as the sprawled in the dust.

"~Yes, I think the atrocities of what the Pakistani terrorists did to two young Western girls will be a valuable story for us.~"

Meggan shook her head after a moment of lying there in the dust—not so much with that being natural, then. She was winded and would probably have a bruise later, but was otherwise okay for the moment. She rolled onto her side a bit, to look at the other girl, fervently hoping she wasn't really hurt either, before whispering, “Pixie? You okay?”

She didn’t think they would be able to run well to get away—probably not even a little bit—with him making earthquakes every time they tried. Levitating might help, but probably not enough if they ended up being shot at.

"I'm fine," whispered Pixie, afraid to move. Her heart was beating in her chest. She pulled her limbs back toward her body and rose up from the ground into a crouched position. She felt dizzy and sick. Her skin was breaking out into microscopic droplets of her dust substance. "Are you alright Meggan?" She never took her eyes off the grey-skinned man. She was holding back her dust, as she'd learned in her training, but she was prepared to release it in one big cloud if he took a single step toward them.

"We've got to go. Dust," she warned the other girl softly. It might be enough to buy them some time to escape. But this guy had to be extremely powerful. "Run?"

“I’m okay,” Meggan whispered back as she also moved carefully to a crouched position. She was wrong—not just one bruise, but a nice collection of bruises would be showing up later by the feel of it. No broken bones, though. She gave a small tilt of the head, understanding and acknowledging the warning. “Yeah, run.” And then try to find somewhere out of the way that wasn’t as likely fall down around their heads when he used that power again, while trying to find the others.

Pixie nodded back, then quickly rose to her feet. It hurt a lot more than she was expecting--like something in her leg was twisted--and she almost fell over again. As Meggan took off, Pixie released her hallucinogenic dust in a barely-controlled panic. The pollen-like bits swirled faintly in the breeze, carried toward the enemy by the wind, the cloud thickening by the second without really obscuring any vision. She turned and ran after Meggan before waiting to see their attacker's reaction. She hoped he wasn't one of those mutants who was immune to toxins, and she didn't want to stick around to find out.

"Have a nice trip," she had the presence of mind to blurt out while she took off.

Quake looked at the air swirling around him. His silicate form meant he didn't have to breathe, but the soldiers he'd stationed to prevent any escape had no such luck, succuming to the hullucinagenic effects. With a sigh, he reached out his hands, and a vortex of whirling sand and small stones enveloped the girls, forcing them back from the stinging cloud and towards him.

The purple cougar, who had been traveling around the camp trying to help in whatever way she could, was watching the scene unfold from behind a tent a short distance off, trying to calculate the best way to intervene. She wanted to help her friends, but the human part of her brain, with its hold over her animal instincts becoming stronger with all of her X-Men training, was warning her that X-Men didn't kill people, so she had to stop the bad guy without killing him. So it had taken some time for her to decide what she should do, but now that she saw her friends enveloped in the vortex she decided to move.

Catseye hit the bad guy from behind in the stealthiest, fastest pounce she thought she'd ever done before, going for one of his legs. Ripping his leg off wouldn't kill him, so she wouldn't be a bad X-Man, she told herself. But it would distract him and hopefully allow her friends to get away. Except when she bit into his leg it was like biting into a rock!

The force of her pounce had taken the bad guy off his feet, but she couldn't seem to rip him up or even squash the air out of him, she quickly realized, so Catseye bounded off of him and streaked off in the opposite direction to divide his attack between her friends and herself, circling him as if in a taunt, trying to draw him into going for her.

Quake shook off the attack, grabbing at his leg where he'd been bitten. His skin was living rock, which made him highly resistent to damage, but not invulnerable. The purple cat thing's bite had hurt. He snarled and tried to corral the mutant, driving up pylons of dirt around her, forcing her into a smaller area where he could trap her.

Watching the bad guy grasp his leg had Catseye growling in triumph. So his skin could get hurt! That was a very good thing!

Training with Hank and with Jean-Paul in the quarry, jumping over rocks to work on her agility had Catseye responding to the pylons immediately, hopping from one to another to another as they began appearing, never staying on long enough for them to grow too high for her to jump back to the ground safely. She jumped pylon after pylon until she was at the bad guy again, going in for another attack, this time to his other leg. The rock-like skin had hurt her teeth, so this time she used her claws to rip into his leg, striking with both paws in quick succession, then a quick bite before she dodged away again.

Quake shifted quickly, and a bolt of earth and stone shot from the ground, catching her square in the chest and launching the purple cat a dozen feet back in the air from the impact. He smiled in a satisfied manner, and looked back to where his original prey had been. Unfortunately for him, they were no longer there.

Catseye’s distraction had lasted long enough for Meggan and Pixie to scramble away from the fight. Meggan sagged against a wall for a moment to catch her breath, pausing only to cough from some of the inhaled dirt. She sent a worried look toward Pixie, asking quietly, “Are you hurt?”

Doing a belated check of herself, she noticed that she had several gashes from the sharper stones to add to her collection of bruises—and a layer of dirt. She’d shake all the dust out of her hair and clothes later, when they were sure they were safe. Right now, though, she was more worried for Pixie--and how Catseye was faring.

Pixie had forgotten about her leg while the girls had made their mad dash for freedom. Now it was stinging with pain. Her face felt sticky with dirt and probably from some gashes as well. She winced as she propped herself against the wall for a moment.

"Nothing too bad," she said. "Are you alright? We should keep moving, but..." But Cats. Would she be OK?

The big cat circled Quake, who made her dance in position with a flurry of rock strikes. Eventually, the trainee X-Man would be worn down, and he'd have a perfect shot.

***

"We have to go back," Pixie said, over the constant rumble of earth being shoved up from the ground. "He's too strong for Cats. She saved us, and now we need to help her get away too." She could see dust billowing in the distance where the fight was still going on. She couldn't tell who was winning but, strong as she was, Catseye couldn't keep it up forever. "What should we do? My dust didn't seem to do anything to him. I can't run but I think my wings are still fine. If we could just surprise him somehow and then dart away..."

“I know.” Meggan was in total agreement with that—she wanted to help Catseye just as much. She frowned, trying to think of something that wouldn’t just get the three of them killed, before she caught sight of one of the downed power lines nearby. There was a thought.

She turned back to Pixie, and pointed to the line. "Would electricity work? Even for just a second, even if it wouldn’t hurt him, it might just surprise him enough to let Catseye go? I don’t think it’ll hurt me if I hold it, since, well…I used to eat it sometimes. Could that work?" This was a little bigger than a fork in a socket for a quick snack, but it might be doable. Run at him with a line, levitate away from him, and hope that it was a big enough distraction.

Pixie rubbed her chin and thought. "I wish I'd paid more attention in science class when the teacher was talking about electricity," she admitted. "Well, when lightning hits the ground, that's bad, right? It's really hot and can melt rocks, right? Rock-type things can still be hurt by electricity, I think." She looked at the fallen power line. "Well, I think it's worth a shot." She was worried about her friend, though. Meggan looked pretty beat up. But Pixie wouldn't be able to touch the line.

Meggan nodded with a slight grin. “Break them or melt them, right…either turning the sand around it into glass, or just something like glass.” She’d read up on electricity at one point—at the time, she’d thought she might as well get to know a little about the thing she could use for a weird snack. While she might have looked more than a bit on the rough side, she was still going to try if it could help out Catseye in any way. She walked closer to the fallen line, crouching beside it, before finally picking it up.

“Oh! Not too much, then!” Still able to drink it even in this amount of voltage, it looked like, so it shouldn’t hurt her. Her clothes might be singed when this was over, but she wouldn’t be. The feeling was akin to asking for a small cup of tea, and getting six cups of double espresso instead—and actually daring to drink it all. Meggan took a deep breath, before glancing at Pixie with a small, hopefully reassuring grin. “If I run out there, he’ll hear me. So I levitate and throw, and you grab Catseye.”

Pixie nodded, stretching out her wings and getting ready to fly. This was going to work. It had to!

With one last look at Pixie, she gathered the power line nearer to herself so it would be both easier to throw and harder to get herself tangled in, before levitating away. She hoped this would end well…and that the frequent popping and crackling of the line she was holding couldn’t be clearly heard over the sounds of the ground rumbling. At least this way he wouldn’t hear footsteps. Attempting to clear her mind of any fear or nervousness, she hovered just a little bit closer.

She was still partially hidden by some fallen debris, so she’d use that to her advantage. With the line continuously shooting sparks, it would be useless to try to hide in the shadows of anything for very long. Gaining a better grasp on the line by shifting just a little, she edged a little more to the left. There was a better shot at it all working from this angle.

In one swift motion she unwound and hurled the power line as hard as she possibly could at him, before going veering up and to the right. She didn’t want to get swatted if nothing happened.

The line snapped across the field of view of the Guardsman, forcing him to back off, covering his eyes as it sparked and lashed around him. His hissed in pain as it glanced from his shoulder, sending lances of pain down his arm. Instinctively he tried to backpedal from the attack, dropping his guard for a moment, and losing his control over the earth manipulation he'd been using to fence Catseye in.

Pixie zipped toward Catseye. She stopped from getting too close to the battle, however, as she realized that Casteye now had the opening she needed to take down the enemy. She waved desperately at her friend, behind the enemy a bit where he wouldn't be able to see her. She hovered frantically in the air, waiting to see if Catseye would be able to defeat the enemy or if she would dart away and escape.

Catseye shifted suddenly, back into her human form and darted forward. She deftly grabbed the flailing cord and jammed it into the distracted Quake's chest harness, threading it through one of the chest straps in a desperate lunge before jumping back and into Pixie's arms as the New Mutant pulled her back out of the range of the Imperial Guardsman. Quake screamed, a high thready sound, as the electricity scorched through his body. He was able to pull the cord from his chest, but smoke poured off his body and he toppled over, hitting the ground with a loud thud.

Meggan landed near Pixie with a slight wince when he fell. It didn’t look like he was going to be getting up again, judging by the evidence. And if electricity hadn’t done the trick, she wasn’t certain as to what they could have tried to stop him. They were filthy and hurt, but at least they had survived. She looked at herself, and then the others.

With a tired smile, she finally suggested, “Okay. Next stop for us is somewhere with a medical area. Sound good?” They all needed to get patched up. And then, they could find a change of clothes for her, since the voltage had burned several small holes in the side of her shirt—although with all the dirt, it might not be that easy to tell. Other than her clothing, the voltage had done nothing to her.

Pixie hardly dared breathe. Was it over? Were they safe? She glanced over her friends. Meggan had soot and dirt all over and was her hair sticking up cartoon-style just a bit from the electricity or was it her imagination? Catseye looked exhausted and Pixie didn't feel any better than the others looked.

"Yeah, medical," she finally said, nodding. The relief she felt was overwhelming--it made her insides feel like jelly. "Meggan, Cats, we won!"