X-Men Mission: The Grotesque and the Sublime: Just A Quick Drink

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

Some of the X-Men follow Dugan to meet with Archie Corrigan at the Princess Bar while the rest keep watch outside.

Thanks to Doqz for socking Corrigan



The Princess Bar at the first glance looked like a set out of a period Gold Rush California set. The interior of the bar went up three stories, ringed with private rooms and gambling stations. One almost expected to see cowboys dealing poker at a table, until the initial shock of the interior wore off, and the details swam into view. While it might have been built on the same lines as an old style saloon, it was anything but out of date. The tables thronged with a curious mix of hard looking men and women; predominantly Asian, but spaced with knots of other nationalities, all talking and negotiating and drinking over various deals. Dugan waved at the bartender, obviously familiar to the place, and motioned them towards the bar.

"I don't see Corrigan yet. He might be checking you guys out first, or just running late. Either way, we can wait for him here." Dugan said, as a drink was placed in front of him. "Chuck, see this? This means 'two'. Two drinks. Geez."

'Oh, I don't-" Paige stuttered, as a drink was thrust in her hand, tall and blue. "Actually, this has the equivalent calories of my entire dinner, so if you could... Garrison, I think they're ignoring me again, can you at least get them to water it down? I don't want to end up on the pool table again."

Jean propped an elbow against the bar and gave the bartender a quick New York-style whistle, barely heard anyway over all of the conversation but close enough to for him to hear where they were.

"Chuck, is it?" she said, flashing the man a grin as she grabbed Paige's drink and held it up. "Ice water for my friend here, I'll take this one. Thanks."

She gave Paige a look for confirmation that it was okay she took over, then glanced back to Dugan.

"Hopefully not 'ran into a group of thugs' late. What does he look like?" she said. Having an idea of his appearance would allow her to spot him.

"Older. Red hair going grey. No taste in clothes." Dugan said, ignoring the terrible Hawaiian print shirt he was wearing.

"Like the guy standing behind you?" Kane pointed out.

The tall man, whose cadaverous appearance, made him look like a giant looming wraith spared Dugan a brief, disinterested glance and waving to the group in a desultory fashion turned his attention back to the waitress. "SO, listen Nancy - see the thing is with the running into my head from heaven... And that’s how come you like an… angel? No, wait. There was also a polar bear, I think. Because you are fat and the ice was thin… All right let me start from scratch - Hold you body against me!"

Corrigan's long drooping mustaches flew up and sideways under the force of the slap, which - otherwise - he excepted rather stoically. His habitually mournful expression even brightened up minutely as the interminable injustices heaped upon him by the universe were reinforced yet again. Thus confirming his general view of the world as a terrible and ugly place of terrible ugliness.

Captain Archibald Corrigan, Ret., very late of United States Air Force, and presently a free spirited bon-vivant and gentleman who have loved to be of leisure, cleared his throat solemnly, tugged on his faded leather jacket, brushed off the non-existent speck of dust off his checkered pants and morosely faced the yet another trial that the Almighty had seen fit to put before him.

"Dum-Dum. You've put on weight. And also the ugly."

"Archie. I see you're still wearing that ferret nailed to your face. Let's have a seat." They went to one of the side booths and slid in, Dugan on Corrigan's right. It was an odd collection at the table, and drew a few glances from around the bar. "This is Garrison Kane, Christian's kid. He's the one that knows Logan and North."

Corrigan stared at Kane measuringly, a faintly puzzled expression stealing across the scraggled face. "Huh. And yet he looks so normal..." Archie shrugged and shook it off, turning the watery blue eyes toward Paige. "I am the CEO of South Seas Airways, you know. A man of means. A Taipan. Possibly the Taipan. Very exotic and rich and powerful. Are you single? Also, what's your name?"

"It's Paige, and as tempting as I find that offer in the making, I'm already getting regular intercourse from a touch empath who shoots lasers. Generally at people who hit on me." Paige casually stole a sip of the beer sitting in front of Garrison, ignoring his protesting noise, before returning to her water. "But I'll keep you posted if things change. That is of course if we leave on friendly terms..."

"The other one is married, Archie. Now, to the business at hand." Dugan started, but Kane cut in.

"You used to fly for Logan and David North. Part of the WEAPON X program." Garrison said, quietly enough not to be overheard. "About sixteen months ago, a team of Canadian military were slaughtered in the Arctic and one of Logan's duplicate dogtags was found at the radar station the others were ambushed at. Near as we can tell, there's been absolutely no discernable connection between the site, the incident and Logan's past until now. You logged a flight path out of Madripoor four days before, made a stop in Hong Kong, and then flew directly to Cold Lake, Alberta. Your flight was logged as a fishing charter. You remained on the ground for seven days, before returning by the same flight path."

Archie blinked owlishly and leaned back. "... what the fuck is weponex? Some kinda of new detergent? Because SSA uses Tide, you know. Exclusive contract and we, at SSA, are known for our loyalty. " As the verbal flood continued to pour, Corrigan's long and surprisingly agile fingers dipped viper-quick into his jacket. "Also, I just want to make this clear that firstly - marriage is an outdated and dirtily bourgeois institution. I mean let us be honest here, it's essentially institutionalized slavery. You don't look like the kind of girl who would be on the side of slavery... Would you? No, no you would not."

A small slick-looking apparatus, highly illegal and horrifyingly expensive, made its way onto the table, the row of lights blinking with increased rapidity as Archie pressed the innocuous looking switch on the box's side, maintaining a steady flow of verbal assault all the while.

"And Paige, you should seriously reconsider your decision-making paradigm. My life-experience strongly suggests that all empaths are disturbingly odd and highly weird bastards. I mean, it's all fine and dandy and then suddenly you wake up one day with a cleaver in your jugular and your puppy in the soup bowl, because the neighbor's kid snuck a DVD of "Carrie" into his room. I, on the other hand, am a responsible and level-headed member of Madripoor's business community. Stable. Dependable. Seldom if ever shoot anything weird out of my eyes. He shoots lasers out of his eyes, right? It's always the eyes. Not me. I need those for seeing. Or crying. Which I am not afraid to do. In touch with my feminine side, I am. Especially, when I watch "Bambi." Because I am a romantic, Paige. Heart as big as all outdoors. You should definitely give me your number. Just in case your boyfriend goes crazy and you need someone to talk to. Be prepared for all eventualities - that's our motto at SSA!"

The lights reached their crescendo, turned uniform green and went out. Corrigan smiled in an avuncular fashion at the X-Men. "Have y'all gone functionally retarded? This place has been the designated clearinghouse for SouthEast Asian cloak-and-dagger bullshit since the pirates were still wearing lace and mascara. Every square inch of this dump is bugged, as ae most of the patrons. We got 7 minutes, most of which I plan on spending telling you to go fuck yourselves and getting the young lady's digits. Because commitment to privacy of my highly unstable clientele is what keeps me alive and in the mustache-wax money. And she is very pretty. "

Dugan reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black box of his own. "Figured it would take something like that to drop the crazy man act, Archie." He put it back in the pocket. "Besides, Rosie's already got this section shut down. Like I said, this is Christian Kane's kid, and what he doesn't know about cloak and dagger bullshit, his dad puts the hard word out that it's to be arranged."

"Look, Mister Corrigan, I don't particularly care what your day to day business is here on Madripoor. All I want to know about is that trip." Kane said, hoping that it wouldn't end up coming to threats.

"The faster you tell us, the faster we get out of your hair and let you get back to doing what you do. Otherwise, why are you here? Surely you could've found other ways to tell us fuck you from the safety of far far away," Jean said, not buying his song and dance. "You can't be that masochistic. So let's talk."

Corrigan's face fell easily into its traditional glumness. "Typical. I suppose there will be various promises of horrible pain and dismemberment coming up shortly. It's always with the bullying and threats with you people. Un-neighborly. Un-American. Just for that you, young miss, can stay in your horribly depressing marriage. You can't have my number. There I said it. It's over between us. And you Dum Dum, you disappoint me most of all. I though you people were supposed to be jolly and such."

The same graceful fingers of a pianist (or a strangler) twisted briefly, making a pen appear between them as if by a conjuring trick. Snagging his napkin Corrigan sketched out a name on it quickly, and slid the paper over to Dugan and Kane. "Your Dad should have told you, kid. And if not him, North. Hell, even that dwarfy redneck had learned eventually. We are an economy of favors. That name on there has been making trouble for me. Very unpleasant gent." Corrigan tugged his mustache at Paige meaningfully. "Not cuddly like me. Now, before you manly types go jumping to conclusions - I don't want him killed or even hurt. Just warned. If my good pal Christian will be willing to pick up a phone on my behalf himself - fine and beautiful."

Archie shrugged and leaned back. "I am an old - although still surprisingly virile - pilot, Dum. I need an occasional reminder that my good fiends haven't forgotten about me. That they still care. So, if not Big Ole Kane, get somebody else reasonably heavy to put the word out. And also get that young lady jot down her email on there. Favors, eh? Make the world go around."

"Don't worry. Archie. I'll make sure the word goes back up the line for you."

Kane took the napkin and slid it into his pocket. "I appreciate it, Mr Corrigan." He suddenly grinned. "Paige, how about it?"

It was easy to nip the pen out of his hand, scribbling down her general secure email. "The lasers come out of his mouth, actually," Paige said as she wrote. "His whole jaw, really, it just sort of gets out of the way. It can be very useful, I'm just saying.'

She grinned. "You have a good evening, sir. And thanks. "

Meanwhile, the X-Men keeping watch outside of the Princess Bar run into some trouble of their own.



From the shadow of an alley across the road from the bar, Yvette watched, trying not to fidget. They had an important task - watching for potential danger for those inside - but she couldn't help feeling nervous. All this talk of mutant gang wars had the people of Madripoor edgy and being a visible mutant wasn't exactly safe.

Besides, the alley reeked.

She glanced over at Angel, giving the older girl a wry grin. "So much for the glamorous spy life, yes?"

The other girl was squatting on the opposite side of Yvette and gave her a look that could be seen even in their poor lighting. "I smell like booze that's been peed on a hobo," Angel said mournfully, trying her best not to touch anything. Even though she had more experience as a full team member than Yvette, she had a case of the nerves as well. "Does being scared ever go away?"

"I think the whole wanting to pee your pants thing's always going to be there." Bobby kept an close eye on Yvette. He remembered being the new guy on the team all too well, and he felt a special sense of wanting to protect the newbies on their early missions. "The key is to not show that to the other guys." He shrugged for a seconds. "Or at least to use it as some kind of weird attack that they'll never see coming."

Hank was watching from a perch two stories up, listening in via the microphones he'd installed around alleyway- not that he needed it with how loud they were being. Aside from the younger mutants, things were eerily quiet- something that had, in his experience, never yielded positive results. It was hard to see over the pollution and neon lights, but Hank judged the hour was late without looking at his watch and suppressed a yawn that had been pecking at the back of his mind for the better part of a half-an-hour. The doctor pressed a blue finger against his ear, "Beast to guard team- we are trying to maintain a low profile, let's practice a touch of sound discipline, shall we?" When he let it go the unit beeped at him- the batteries were dead and his warning had fallen on deaf ears. Adjusting his position ever so slightly he rolled his eyes and began to look back below for any signs of trouble.

Yvette held back a giggle at Angel's remark, but took heart from the words of her teammates. She wouldn't have been made full team if they didn't think she could do it, she reminded herself as she looked out across the street to the bar. Movement caught her eye, and she frowned a little. "I think we have the company?" she suggested. "Over there - that man by the water barrel. He has a gun."

The man was joined by another, and then another. They were Asian, possibly Korean, dressed in jeans and t-shirts and nylon jackets that hung awkwardly over their shoulder holsters. They had been studiously looking everywhere but towards where the mutants waited, but as more started to stream into the area, they started to move towards them. At the very fringe of the group, there was another man, dressed in a black suit and talking on a cellphone. He made a gesture to one of the Koreans, and then folded his phone and started walking in the other direction. The group moving towards them now broke into a trot, and hands began to reach for weapons.

"Well looks like handling this peacefully is out of the question." Stepping in front of some of his other teammates, Bobby quickly blinked his eyes. As they opened, he had already hardened the molecules around his skin. The air that came from his lungs exploded in a burst of cold condensation. He narrowed his eyes, as they, like the rest of his body were now composed of an ice-like organic molecule. Looking directly at the advancing members, he lowered his voice. "So, are you guys gonna tell us who the dude on the cell phone was, or do we have to do this the hard way?"

The men stared at him for a moment, and spoke in rapid-fire Korean. It was a long sequence of words for a 'no', but they punctuated it with drawing weapons, and charging with a scream at the X-Men.

"Looks like the hard way." Was all Bobby could say before he turned to check on the other members of the team.

Yvette's fingers and toes had already lengthened and sharpened, reacting to her emotional state. She glanced up at where Hank was perched, and then nodded to Bobby. "So it seems," she replied shortly, even as the first bullets whined off the brick next to her and she ducked, reflexively. "We must make this fast, so the by-standers are not hurt!"

Hank jumped from his covered position, leaping between the sides of the narrow alleyway. A quick tactical assessment placed Firestar as the team's weak-point- as Iceman and Penance would be little more than bruised by the bullets that would be flying shortly. The man with the cellular was getting away and Hank couldn't have that, but he couldn't abandon the team either. With a sigh and a shake of the head, the doctor shrugged off his indecision and started toward the man who was obviously in charge- putting his faith in Bobby to handle the situation below. Fishing two fingers into a pouch on his waist, he produced a small dart with a flattened metal tip and a blinking red light on the opposite end. Running now, Hank leapt the side of a roof and dropped onto a make-shift fire escape overlooking the street where the limousine was now speeding toward safety. Taking no more than a second, the doctor threw the single magnetic tracking dart he had packed and watched as it missed spectacularly. The blunted metal end pinging off a water pipe on the side of the building across the street. Shoulders slumped, Hank hefted himself up and headed back to the ally, hoping he wasn't too late to lend a hand.

Quickly Bobby reached forward and concentrated. As he watched one of the men in the front. A smirk came over Bobby's face as he began to focus on the molecules around the man's gun, and a cold sheath of ice formed over its muzzle. He knew that at least one of the guns would be offline for the foreseeable future, and he turned his attention to the next gun in the row of charging men.

The men dropped their guns, surprised at the sudden aura of cold around them. Others flowed past them, and now fighting irons and hatchets joined the fray as one ricocheted off Bobby's icy exterior, chipping away a chunk of ice. Another man attempted to grab Yvette, and screamed as his hands tangled bloodily in her razor sharp hair. It was clear that they had no idea what they were dealing with, but intended to try and use their numbers and mass to overwhelm the mutants.

One of the group ducked around the others and lunged for Angel; who had been keeping back on purpose. Fire couldn't distinguish between good guy and bad guy; she wasn't John with his control over any and all flames. In tight quarters, she couldn't just fling the stuff around. She jumped backwards and to the side as the man with the knife tried to get a hold of her - there was enough of her fire shielding around to help protect her but slashing things had a habit of breaking through more quickly.

She threw up her arm to block his and he cursed as his shirt sleeve caught fire from where it had struck her arm.

Wincing at the screams and the blood, Yvette dropped her shoulder and pushed the man away from her, engaging another with a hatchet. Sparks flew as she blocked the blade between her fingers, twisting it out of the man's hand with a flick of her wrist before she followed up with a a slash of her other hand, dragging her talons across the back of his knee and hobbling him. He was replaced with three more gang members, and she was forced backwards.

Hank had hurried back from what had turned out to be nearly three blocks away, arriving in time to brim with pride and concern as Yvette diced her way through the gangsters who seemed intent on pushing the team further into the misty darkness of the alley. A sudden flicker of movement on a fire escape behind the team caused Hank's hands to seek his monocular- with an infrared lens he'd installed recently. As he scanned he alley the blue doctor identified the shapes of another dozen-and-a-half men with automatic weapons, waiting for the men the X-Men were engaged with to push the mutants into an ambush.

Putting the device away, Hank jumped from the rooftop and made his way down to the ground, landing in a crouch behind Yvette's three new attackers with the silent-grace of a four-hundred pound jungle cat. "Excuse me gentlemen, but I don't suppose we could resolve this without violence, could we?" Hank put forth his hands, palms open and up as a gesture of peace. The trio of goons turned to draw their aim on the older mutant, "I suppose not then." Before they could think of pulling the triggers, Hank jumped into the air and somersaulted behind them kicking two of them in the back of the head and sending them to the alley-floor with a sickening thud. As he landed, he swept his foot out for the third, knocking him off balance and catching him before his head impacted with the pavement.

The man snarled something at Angel that she couldn't understand but from his motions, it was clear he was going to try and ignore the fire as long as he could. She kept dodging around him, or trying to, when he just went for broke and lunged with the knife towards her midsection. Hours upon hours of Danger Room training kicked in as Angel barely managed to grab his wrist and yank it to the side. She kept going, though, following through with a head butt - briefly sans the fire - that earned her opponent a broken nose and unconsciousness.

"One day I will learn to do that," Yvette told him with a brief smile, before her attention was drawn to yet more gang members approaching. "How many of them are there?" she asked, only partly rhetorically.

"It's the first rule of bad guys..." Turning his attention to the ground, Bobby quickly made an ice patch appear just a few inches in front of one of the approaching gangsters. He smiled as he knew that the man's foot was about to hit a skid that he would have no chance of seeing or adjusting to. "You always bring about 5 dozen more goons than you need. Six dozen if they're a particular brand of stupid."

Behind them the alleyway suddenly lit up with bright blue fire as Angel, who had turned from her first guy down only to find herself being jumped on by three others, rocketed upwards. Two men were thrown off of her from the force, suits on fire, as she slammed herself against the side of one of the buildings to knock the other off of her back. She winced, slightly, as he fell off and bounced off of a large trash bin. "Great, knowing our luck, they have a baker's dozen with them."

While the attackers from the front were forced to give ground in the face of the X-Men's defense, now the ambushing units had grown tired of waiting, and made an appearance pouring up through the alley with a hail of gun fire.

"Looks like you might be right!" Spinning around, Bobby quickly began forming a solid wall of ice between his team and the pressing forces, hoping to slow them down long enough that the team could adjust to the new force. "Think someone can leave a present for our new friends while I finish these guys off?"

Angel noticed a number of bad guys falling behind, probably in hopes that if someone was going to fall first, it wouldn't be them. Concentrating, she shoved her arms out in front of her as she pushed a wave of fire down towards the alley. It hit in between the two groups of men, cutting off several of them from being able to go forward. They'd either have to go up or go around while the rest of the group had to go forward or wind up with their backs on fire.

Yvette half-turned as another volley of gunfire came down the alley, letting several bullets strike her back and bounce off. It hurt, but it was better than letting Hank or Angel be hit. "I think they're starting to fall back!" she called out, seeing the men on Angel's side of the alley beginning to falter.

Hank kicked a pistol away from one of the fallen gangsters, sending it clattering against Iceman's improvised wall. "I observed at least eighteen others on the other side of the wall, but I think we may have scared them away." The doctor removed zip-ties from his belt and began to tie the gangster's hands behind their backs before inspecting them for serious injuries.

Bobby bent down and looked to make sure that the final gunman was out from sliding on the ice before turning back to his team. "Like I said, a severe kinda of stupid." He took in a deep breath. "The only thing I still want to know was who the hell was the dude with the cell phone?"