xp_logs | Operation: Red Letter Day

X-Force springs their rap in London.

The dingy white vans were as unnoticed as a scrap of trash on the wind. Ubiquitous in London for small movers and contractors, no one noticed two park down at opposite ends of the street, or one on the other side of the park. Inside, armed men made final adjustments to their equipment, having been fully briefed on the power of the opposition.

“Attention, ja? The target is the house beside the old garage. No survivors. Silenced weapons only. I don’t want half of the London police down on our necks before we’re done. The two blondes are our first targets – eliminate them at maximum range if possible.” Andreas Strucker said into his microphone. It felt good to have retaken his proper surname.

"Team One, you're with us for the house. Team Two, take the other building." There was only an angry buzzing in response. "Good. Move out!"

Curling her hand over Andreas' shoulder, Andrea tapped her fingers gently. "My brother and I are quite serious about that," she added. "Any mistakes or missteps will be severely frowned upon." Andrea smiled, briefly, leaving one to wonder if she didn't look forward to someone getting in trouble. She felt fantastic and was happily anticipating this next attack.

The various men piled out of the vans. All of their black outfits bore 'Police' badges and signs, to further obfuscate their true purpose. The second team moved rapidly across the park, quickly breaching the fence of the old plant and arraying out to storm it.

"They are approaching, we have less than a minute." Marie-Ange said as she fidgeted with the shoulder of the short grey jacket she'd thrown on. "This is not going to be a clean fight." She gave Amanda a quick glance and nod, and then looked directly at Cammie. "Whatever Logan taught you? Use it. I need you to not be dead after today."

"You two get to the plant and get ready, I'll finish up here," Amanda said, looking grimly satisfied things had finally started happening. Time to spring the trap. "I'll 'port in when I'm done."

"Hey, if there's one thing I'm good at, it's not dying," Cammie said dryly. But she wasn't going to be sloppy either. It was about fighting smart, "Let's do this. The longer we sit around the more I want to fucking scream."

Marie-Ange had to admit she actually felt much the same. Twitchy, anxious - and quite like she wanted to stab someone. She had promised to stab the people who had Remy, after all. She waited a few seconds after Cammie set off to the plant, it gave her time to pick up a backpack and throw it over her shoulder and it meant two targets, and two chances they'd been seen going to the plant. They wanted to be followed, after all.

"See you in a few," Amanda said to her friend, even as she headed for the stairs. Let them think she was trapped up there. "Let's make these bastards pay."

"With interest, please." The smile that Marie-Ange flashed at Amanda as she headed towards the back door of the house was malicious and cold, even for her.

==

Unlike the house, which was comfortable and homey and had actually been quite nice to stay in, if you overlooked the part where they had been planning revenge the entire time, the plant was concrete and rusting metal and rat droppings and cobwebs. And booby traps. What time they hadn't spent trying to make it look like the entire time was holed up in the house had been spent setting up tripwires and loosening the hanging lights enough that a good shove would send them crashing to the ground. Which was why Marie-Ange was carrying an extra handful of cards, all winged demons and skeletal dragons and stolen right out of some card game Doug had been playing in the break room one day.

Cammie clenched and then shook out her left hand. She had taken the bandages off her arm and with how tight she had to tie them there was always a rushing and tingling sensation that went along with it. She wasn't quite sure if it was because she always had it tied a bit tight and her arm fell asleep or if it was the feeling of previously confined toxin just rushing down into the fingers. She always assumed, and it was safer to assume, that it was the latter. "Finally," she muttered, "some fucking action."

***

The Struckers paused with the strike team at the front of the house. Andreas held up his phone. "Swarm, take the other facility. We've got the house." He smiled and held out his hand for his sister. Together they raised their twined hands and a bio-electric blast blew the front door right off of it's hinges. "Team one and two, move in. We'll back you up."

He paused and looked at his sister. "I admit, I'm actually a little disappointed. They seemed more formidable in Zurich."

Amanda had reached the top of the stairs when she heard the front and back doors burst open and the sound of booted feet charging in. She paused just long enough for them to catch a glimpse of her before running for one of the bedrooms, slapping the door shut behind her.

"Target spotted!" It was a male voice barking the orders. Probably ex-military, most likely a merc. "Cover the exits, search the house for the rest of them. Don't let them get away or it's your necks!"

The witch smiled grimly to herself. If only they knew...

The door shuddered as several of the foot soldiers began battering it down. Amanda slipped her hand into her pocket, slowly and carefully, not flinching as the cheap wood of the door burst into splinters, revealing a lot of men with a lot of large guns.

"Hands above your head!" one of them barked at her.

Amanda raised the one that wasn't in her pocket, blowing him a kiss even as she began to sink into the floor. "Not bloody likely," she said, pulling her other hand out of her pocket to reveal the detonator with her thumb pressed firmly on the button. "You picked the wrong people to fuck with."

She released the button and disappeared into London with an audible "schloop!" sound, while behind her the carefully-rigged explosives erupted, turning the house into an armageddon of fire and screams.

***

The mesh facemasks told Marie-Ange it was absolutely the right decision to not have Wanda and her bee allergy accompany them, even if the extra set of hands - and powers - might've been useful. Not having two teammates go down with serious injuries was worth the risk. She caught a glimpse of Cammie's distinctive hair as the other woman ducked inside an alcove, which was the cue to be noticed herself. They'd agreed on a in-and-out sort of plan at least to start, since they were outnumbered. Be visible for a moment, get their attention and then let the other teammate go for an attack. If Cammie was hiding, then it was Marie-Ange's cue to be briefly visible, and dramatic and flashy was something she could do. Perhaps not as well as Jubilee or Wanda, but who needed explosions when you had a card with a three-headed dog made of fire on it?

Marie-Ange's German was a bit rusty, but "What the fuck is that?" was not too hard to translate at a guess as the imaged dog ran towards the men and collided into the slowest to react. It popped into a mass of ectoplasm, but the man was down as well, one leg bent at an impressively wrong angle. He wouldn't be getting up anytime soon.

Okay, she hated to admit it, but what little she saw of that was actually pretty cool. That, and it was always fun to watch someone get mauled by an animal, at least if prime time TV and growing up in a farming community had taught her anything. One of the ones who hadn't been mauled by the dog of fire and death - that should totally be a band name - came within grabbing distance and was. Around the neck. With her left hand. "Oops. I bet that hurts, well, would if you still were alive." Instructions had bee 'hit it until it stopped moving.' Which was a lot easier to do without all the pressure on her special arm from the bandages. In fact, this unlucky asshole had gotten a bit too much.

Half of this was the element of surprise and perhaps a little confusion - the HYDRA operatives were still operating under the assumption that all of X-Force was in London, or if not all of them, a large portion of them. Which Marie-Ange was happy to encourage. An image of Jake, wielding a baseball bat was easy enough to bring up, and from her hiding place behind the metal, she sent the image running wildly into the cluster of groaning men. Which was perhaps not so scary, until she sent another and another, and when the first one went down from gunfire, a fourth, and then a fifth. They would've been barely recognizable as anything more than a humanoid figure with Jake's face, but in the dim light it did not matter so much. They were just there to distract.

Screams erupted as another of the booby traps claimed more victims, a heavy lighting fixture crashing down onto several more of the armed men. Then there was a roar as the house exploded, flames licking the walls of the plant and the moans of the injured audible even in the plant.

The ground wobbled in front of Marie-Ange and Amanda popped up, grinning ferally. "Gotta love a dramatic entrance," she said to the precognitive. "That ought to take care of the incest twins. How're things going here?"

There was an explosion as the operatives finally slammed a shaped charge into the main door. As it blew inwards, the room was filled with buzzing as clouds of bees followed the reinforcements inside, swarming as they expanded out to fill the entrance.

#findallofthemandkillthemdead# It was that odd, old fashioned German voice, created from the modulation of the buzz of the swarm. #noquarternosurvivors#

"Oh fine, we have bees." Marie-Ange said, flatly. She wasted no time in stripping off her backpack, already unzipped with a odd white vinyl something half out of it, and then the short grey jacket, revealing a shoulder holster and a pistol that looked an awful lot like one of Doug's. "We should probably be ready to run. I left a lot of bug spray out where Cammie could get into it. She was drinking it like you drink tea."

Amanda snorted. "Well, it's about time she was useful for something other than being snarky," she replied. "I can't wait to see her face when we do this."

"She was quite useful before, although the men vomiting up their intestines may not have thought so." Marie-Ange unholstered the gun, and was very careful aiming at Cammie, who was still pounding one of the operatives' faces in. She'd been told to beat on people until they all died, or until she was told to come back, and for all her snark, Marie-Ange was fairly pleased that the green-haired woman had gone and done just that.

Hopefully she was too busy to hear Marie-Ange and Amanda's conversation too. Despite a handful of stings from the encroaching bees, Marie-Ange got off one neat shot, and a bloom of black spread across Cammie's jeans.

"OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Cammie exclaimed, stumbling a bit because it fucking hurt. The smell made it obvious what had happened even if she kind of knew already, "You fucking SHOT me! Are you fucking crazy!?"

"Now we run.' Marie-Ange tossed Amanda a facemask, covered her own nose and mouth with one, and sprinted away from the alarmingly loudly buzzing bees, leaving the backpack, and the hazmat suit she'd packed in it, and the first aid supplies behind. Cammie would have to do her own bandaging until they could get to her with gas masks on.

As they ran, Amanda clapped her hands together, erecting a shield around herself and Marie-Ange. Partly to assist with the not being poisoned to death, partly to keep out the angry, dying bees buzzing all around them. "Scorpion!" Amanda called into the mic that was a standard part of their equipment. "Do one more lap of the place and then get clear. Time to bail!"

"Gee, I don't know, can I shoot you fuckers when I get back there? Because that's what I'm going to fucking do!" she said. The threat was empty, if only because she didn't carry a gun. Either way, she was taking her anger out on the few people who were still left standing, ignoring the sound of bees. It wasn't like she was allergic to the damn things, and if they were like anything else, the smell of the blood at the very least would get to them, a lot like the guy she had by the face was enjoying it up close and personal. Luckily the gunshot wound was pretty superficial. It didn't really stop her from moving around, and other than the fact it was bleeding didn't seem to be in a place that hurt too much. Which made her pretty sure it had been on purpose.

The figure made of bees swooped down on Cammie, hungry for vengeance. As the bees swarmed, a thousand stingers plunged into her. But instead of killing her outright, insects began to drop out of the air in huge numbers. Her aerated blood spread out into the air, and Swarm began to twist as his bees feel away in huge piles.

#whatareyouevillittlebitchyouarekillingmychildreniwillfillyouwithbeesuntilyousplitopenand-# His voice grew shrill, screaming as more bees died. His voice began to break up, with the drone of too few bees alive to generate the modulated voice. Through the dying cloud, his form became visible; a skeleton and nervous system covered under a semi-opaque layer of propolis. His hands stretched out, trying to gather the bees back to him, but the last layer fell away.

#iiiiiiiiiii# He had one last cry before the skeleton collapsed, cracking and breaking as it smashed into the concrete floor.

The air was filled with the wailing of sirens as almost every emergency service in London seemed to be converging on their position. Those remaining men who had survived the house explosion and Cammie's toxic blood were staggering to their vans, too busy getting out to notice their targets.

"Time to be away on our toes," Amanda said, raising her hand to her mic again. "Scorpion, are you out? Because we're about to have the dramatic finish here."
The witch let herself sink up to her knees in the road, triggering her connection with London. The city was uneasy, disturbed by the raw anger it was receiving from the link, and by the fire and explosions. Sirens wailed, drawing closer.

Amanda closed her eyes, reaching into the city, aware as she did that she was coming dangerously close to letting it overwhelm her. A low rumble came from the foundations of the plant, dust rising from the brickwork. Then, abruptly, the building collapsed, burying anyone unfortunate enough to still be inside underneath. The witch's voice, when she spoke, echoed with the sounds of the city:

"And they all fall down."

Amanda's smile was dreamy, almost child-like, as she turned to Marie-Ange. "Done," she said, before her knees buckled and she staggered with fatigue. "Home?"

***

A brief moment of quiet settled on the rubble as the nondescript van carrying the three women - two in the front, the third, dressed in a Hazmat suit and swearing under her breath at the other two in the back - drove away. The sirens were close, emergency services responding to reports of explosions and gunfire, but it would still be a few minutes before they would arrive at the scene.

Of the four walls that had been there before, only one was truly still standing as it supported parts of the others. The smoking remains of the house were still settling with loud cracks and groans when tiny shards of a white light started to poke through the rubble on the ground. It grew in intensity for a moment before exploding outwards, sending shrapnel made of building and HYDRA soldiers flying. A formerly perfectly manicured hand shot through the wreckage, soon followed by another, as Andrea Strucker literally clawed her way out from where she'd been partially buried.

There was something wrong with one of her legs and there was a large, warm spot on her side - but she had no ability to focus on her own wounds. "Andreas?!" she shrieked, coughing from all the dust and dirt she'd swallowed. Andrea was frantic as she tumbled free, her panic only rising when she couldn't immediately see her twin. "Andreas, answer me! If they've hurt you - Andreas!"

“Andrea-“ he said as he pulled himself clear of the rubble. Half of his hair had been burned away, and his flawless skin was now covered in dirt and burns. “We need to get out of here. I don’t know how, but we’ve been betrayed, my love. We’ve been betrayed.”

The remainder of the strike team slowly assembled and limped back to their vans, ready to leave London and the sour taste of their own failure behind.