Operation: зимний солдат - Meltdown
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xp_logsX-Force breaks into small teams to deal with Aleksandr Lukin and the Winter Soldier.
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Corporate Warfare: Marie-Ange, Wanda, and Emma go to the Kronas Corporation's Moscow offices to confront Lukin. Lukin, however, is ready for them.
The large red fireball of the Kronas Corporation's logo looked far more ominous in the evening dark and low lighting of Tower 2000 after working hours. X-Force had managed to confirm that Lukin was in the offices working late that evening, and the other offices around Kronas' were empty for the night.
Wanda stood in the shadows across the way and looked at the building critically. So far, their reports had all panned out ... but they were all hyper aware that it could change at less than a moments notice. "Ready?" she asked quietly, turning her head slightly to look at Marie-Ange.
Marie-Ange did not -say- she wished Remy was there, but she thought it, and it was probably clear enough for Emma to "hear". It was not a lack of confidence, exactly. She'd run operations, in New Orleans and before it was just that her team had already had a car thrown at them, been soundly trounced by the downstairs elderly neighbor and half the team was in a radioactive zone and she was starting to question her own ability to get this done without further harm to her people. "I just want to get this done so we can return Mr. Barnes daughter to him."
"Nice in theory," said Emma, bleakly. 'But you're assuming Mr. Barnes' daughter wants to be returned to him." Despite the coldness of her words, Emma sent a tendril of reassurance to Marie-Ange, a warm sliver of confidence. "Nonetheless, Mr. Lukin is rather a stain upon the world. Cry havoc, Wanda?"
"Emma, you always say the nicest things to me." She pointed off to the side. "According to the building plans, there is an emergency door - I can probably disrupt the alarm from going off for a few seconds and we will be less noticed than if we go through the front or the loading docks. Which will probably have physical guards as well." Wanda shrugged as they started to make their way closer. "The door being opened will probably be noticed after we are in, though."
"Once we are in, we are visible. All being noticed will do is bring the guards to us instead of us going to them." Marie-Ange suggested. "And the more of them there are looking for us, the fewer there are personally protecting Mister Stain Upon The World." Who most assuredly had his own protection team, but would send in the fodder first. You did not waste good people if the lesser trained ones could do the job.
"Then let's make sure we are not visible," said Emma. "Perhaps a touch of chaos to get us in and go from there?" Emma nodded at Wanda and the team began their move.
Wanda wasted no time when they reached the door to send a line of chaos flying as she reached for the handle. The alarm system hiccuped long enough for them to hustle through and shut it behind them, leaving them in a quiet hallway that stretched quite a ways down before turning to the right. "These men never want to be on the ground floor," she commented as they started to move. "There has to be a flight of stairs around here somewhere."
The fire stairs were in the middle of the building, easily found once they re-oriented themselves in the hallway. Marie-Ange held the door as Wanda and Emma passed her and then let it shut slowly to keep noise to a bare minimum. Voices might be overlooked as overnight cleaning staff or late shift employees, as long as they were careful but a slamming fire door might raise some eyebrows. "If he has a penthouse office I am going to personally kick him in the throat." she said, looking up - and up - and up - the stairwell.
#Then you had best have your kicking boots on,# said Emma and her words were touched with a mental sigh. She still regretted what she'd had to do to those Louboutins. #Slow and steady, ladies, and lots of rests. I like to think we could run up all the stairs if we needed to, but I'd prefer not to waste my energy.#
"I'll take the lead," Wanda said, reining in her urge to take the stairs three at a time. Emma was right - she could do it but how much energy would be wasted considering the amount of guards in the building? Time constraints were all well and good but a time line doesn't matter much if you're getting kicked in the face because you're winded. It was on the fourth landing when their opposition decided to show itself; Wanda dodged backward, almost knocking into the woman behind her, when a door was kicked in from the other end and nearly took her out. Regaining her balance, she ducked low as the guard swung around and caught her shoulder in his sternum, driving him into the wall.
Marie-Ange's boots had not been designed for kicking but they worked well enough, and the other guard soon found himself on the ground holding one now-shattered kneecap and howling as she put her entire weight on it. "Keys, gentlemen. The faster I have keys, the sooner that we leave you tied up in a corner."
The keys were handed over as quickly as Wanda's guard could remember what hands were and how they worked.
"How sweet," said Emma to the man. "But we really don't have time to tie you up." She reached out with her power, finding little resistance from either mind before her. For a moment she caressed the men with her thoughts, searching out their weaknesses, and then the psychic equivalent of a punch sent them both into unconsciousness. The men slumped indelicately to the floor.
"After you," said Emma, gesturing courteously to Wanda and Marie-Ange to go in front of her. The women began to ascend the stairs again.
* Four guards trained their guns on the door that led to the interior of the penthouse while their comrades hustled their boss further into the background. By now, they were all aware that the intruders were mutants and well-trained but the ones that were waiting for them were the best in the entire building. They knew they had to hit them fast and hard the moment the women came in through the door and they might have gotten at least one of them ... If Wanda hadn't blown a hole through the wall next to the door, sending debris flying like shrapnel into the closest guard. Pieces somehow managed to hit the weaker parts of his armor, sending him stumbling backwards as she burst out a moment later, taking him down hard to the ground as the other three tried to react.
Aleksandr Lukin looked far more at home in the dim light of the offices and the chaos of a firefight than he had in the bright lights of the boardroom. His tie and sport coat had disappeared, and he had a pistol in his hand, though down at one side as he waved and shouted directions to his security force. The guards' training showed, as they reacted quickly to the unexpected. They scattered, each taking cover behind desks and filing cabinets while one of the ones at Lukin's side pulled him out of the direct line to the breach. The steady roar of disciplined firing quickly began echoing in the office.
Marie-Ange's imaged walls - all grey cinderblocks like the polaroid photograph she had in her hand - came up as the shots went off, and went right back down after the bullets hit the walls. It was purely a delay measure, but she was the defensive arm of the trio at the moment and there to cover Wanda because Emma in diamond form was bulletproof - but Wanda was not. The dissolved walls were replaced in the pause between shots and the confusion about where the things had come from and where they had gone and the three women pressed forward.
"Really?" said Emma conversationally to the guard she was walking towards as bullets bounced off her diamond form. "Shooting at me? Not the most useful thing you can do." She shivered deliciously as a bullet ricocheted from between her diamond breasts. "Though if you keep aiming there, I'll start to think that it's foreplay." Whether it was what she said or sheer confusion at the fact that point-blank shots were making no difference, the guard didn't move quickly enough, with Emma reaching him before he thought to change position and snatching the gun from his hands. "Shall I shoot you or do you want to play?' said Emma and then grinned as the guard's hand suddenly filled with a baton telescoping to full length. "Oh good," she said. "I do like it when they play."
There were too many guards, too many chaos lines, for Wanda to simply take Lukin out of commission as easily as she might have if they were just in a room together. And considering she never did enjoy being shot at - not everyone could be Emma Frost - she'd prefer a faster end to this. The man under her wasn't breathing too well as she rolled off of him, keeping low. The strings dictated her next action as she slapped a hand down on the floor and sent a chaos wave rolling off to the side. Several men to their left were rushing forward when they heard an ominous rumbling from beneath their feet and every step or even breath seemed to make the floor shake and shiver. Wanda grinned sharply and threw another bolt at their feet, letting it eat through carpet and floor, concrete and all along with her first action. One more tug of the strings and suddenly a gaping hole in the floor swallowed some of the men while two more were left scrambling to reach safety.
The crash of masonry falling, and the shout of the men falling with it, created a chaos all its own in the office space. One of the guards shouted in Lukin's ear, struggling to make himself heard over the noise, and the words incomprehensible to anyone beyond arm's length. Lukin struggled against the arm on his shirt for a moment, the fire of combat in his eyes, but the guard shouted again and shoved Lukin roughly toward a small balcony area.
As the cacophony of grinding stone and toppling office furnishings began to die down, a different noise rose to take its place - the fast, low-pitched whupwhupwhup of a spinning helicopter rotor. The sound grew louder, and the small plants on the balcony began to flatten as its source rose into view through the plate glass windows.
The Mi-24 helicopter, or its NATO reporting name, 'Hind', was a combination gunship and troop transport, and a workhorse for almost 50 different air forces worldwide. Its stubby side wings wobbled slightly as the pilot struggled to keep it steady so close to a building. As a harness was flung to Lukin and strapped around him, a higher-pitched whine could be heard over the sound of the rotors - the 12.7mm Gatling gun under the nose spooling up.
For a moment, Wanda just stared, completely blind sided by Lukin's ability to bring a helicopter down for his own personal use. The sight of the gatling, however, startled her right back out of her shock. "Down!" she shouted. "Everyone down the fucking hole!" Feet first, trusting in her luck to help her land on her feet.
Marie-Ange hit the floor below back first, and only managed to spread out her arms just in time to take away some of the impact. "Emma, get anything you can from him, I do not care how harsh you have to be." she grunted out, not even bothering to get up yet. Not that Emma needed direction but Marie-Ange was hurting, tired and this entire mission had been a disaster.
At the first sensation of another mind touching his, Lukin grunted, clutching his hands to his temples and marshalling his mental training to give the blonde American as little as he could. "~Get us out of here now!~" he yelled at the pilot, knowing that distance would make the mental connection more difficult, and then impossible, to maintain. The noise of the rotor moved off into the distance and in a minute or so was gone.
Pripyat - Stasis Chamber: Jubilee and Cammie hit the old Directorate X depot that houses the stasis chamber that the Winter Soldier has been kept in all these years, along with Lukin's other hand-me-downs from General Karpov.
The Exclusion Zone was established soon after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, in order to evacuate the local population and to prevent people from entering the heavily contaminated territory. The area adjoining the site of the disaster was originally divided into 4 concentric zones. The most contaminated zone had a radius of 30 km (19 mi) from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The border of the zone was later adjusted to better parallel the locations of highest contamination. Any residential, civil or business activities in the zone are legally prohibited and punishable. But thankfully for X-Force, the perimeter of the zone was somewhat inconsistently patrolled, allowing a small team to gain access.
"Something tells me I should be glad I'm never intending to have kids," Jubilee said, her voice soft, not carrying beyond the range of her team-mate. She waited, counting down in her head the gap they'd need between patrols. "Come on, let's get this thing done and get out of here."
"Yeah, that's never going to be a problem for me either," Cammie noted. For biological reasons and not actually wanting to. Though given the mad-scientist mother, there was more than one reason to not want to reproduce. She cracked her knuckles, "So, let's get this show on the road, eh Sparkles?"
"Sparkles? Dude, what am I? Like, a my little pony?" Jubilee asked, but she was grinning as she said it, and she winked before taking off across the compound and darting into the shadows at a back door, thieves tools already out as she examined the lock. "Keep an eye for guards, yeah?"
"That one that no one ever bought," Cammie lamented with mock sadness, "I'm looking," she said, and she was. It was mostly quiet, but there'd likely be some sort of patrol type thing by soon. In which case she'd punch them. And be happy.
"You wound me, madam," Jubilee joked, tongue poking out slightly as she worked the lock, a small sound of satisfaction escaping as it clicked open. "See, bleeding, totally bleeding."
She pushed the door open and motioned for Cammie to step in ahead of her, already sliding the tools she'd used into an inner pocket of her jacket.
Cammie followed, "Yeah, I know. I'm horrible. So how about we make both of us feel better by blowing this place into tiny little pieces."
Jubilee pulled the C4 out of the slim-line backpack she was wearing and handed off half to Cammie. "Here, go spread 'em around, dude. We wanna make sure we take this place out good and proper."
"I've always wanted to spend a night in wanton destruction," Cammie said, going about her task with a lot of relish, "Tell me they'll be a little crater in the ground and lots of smoke."
"Join X-force, ride the rides," Jubilee muttered with a grin, placing another charge of C4 and taking the time to look over the place as well. Nothing except what they'd already expected so far, and there didn't appear to be any traps or alarms set on the place. "Lots of smoke, yes. Crater? Well, we'll see. You good?"
"Golden," Cammie said, placing the last charge and cracking her knuckles. "Let's blow this joint."
"I think that pun just hurt my soul," Jubilee replied, heading for the door as she chucked small balls of plasma to her left and right, bringing them to hover close to the C4, once she and Cammie were clear, she'd detonate them. "Okay, time to play 'let's avoid all the highly trained guards and not end up dead."
"As a good pun should. Puns, better than guns and twice as amusing," Cammie said happily, "And sure, I guess I could try to avoid the guards. Maybe they'll get off their asses and make it a challenge."
The ratcheting sound of the bolt being pulled back on an AK-74 might as well have been a nonverbal "challenge accepted". A pair of guards stood outside the exit, their rifles trained on the pair of women.
"Dude, you just had to jinx it, didn't you?" Jubilee said, face turned toward Cammie as she threw a wave of sparks at both guard's eyes. "Never, like, tempt fate like that."
The guards were ex-Spetsnaz, and trained in how to deal with things like flash-bang grenades. The problem was that there was usually some kind of sound of a pin or grenade hitting the floor to prepare you for those sorts of things. An immediate wave of disorienting light was impossible to prepare for. The guards both rightly assumed that the sparks were the first part of an attack, and fired more-or-less blindly at where they thought the women had been. Both were off the mark, their rifles pulling high and over Jubilee and Cammie's heads.
"Sorry," Cammie said way too sweetly before pulling the bandages off her left hand with ease and moving in gracefully before hitting one of the guys upside the head. Not hard enough to kill, but enough to cause extreme pain and illness rather suddenly, "I just can't help myself."
The guard that had been touched by Cammie wavered on his feet, trying to fight through the sudden waves of nausea to bring his weapon to bear. Cammie's power was too much for his body, though, and he collapsed to his knees, emptying the contents of his stomach on the ground.
Jubilee took on the second soldier, using a four finger punch to his throat before dancing back out of the way and sending another shower of sparks directly into his face.
The second guard tried to react to Jubilee, but the flashes in front of his eyes had completely disoriented him, and then the punch to the throat had him in a similar pose to his comrade, albeit simply wheezing in an attempt to get oxygen through his windpipe. Neither man was in a position to do anything to the women.
Seeing them both down, and aware that they needed to not engage any more then absolutely neccessary, Jubilee gestured for Cammie to take off ahead of her before she turned toward the building and allowed the control that had kept the sparks floating above the C4 to loosen and drop, detonating the explosives with a solid booming sound that was so loud it set Jubilee's ears to ringing and blew her several feet into the air.
It wasn't what she'd been expecting, although she supposed since she'd never done anything like it before, expectations were made to be broken, or whatever it was you said with those things. She was babbling in her head, that was probably a sign of shock, but she didn't have time to think about it too much, not with the ground coming up so fast toward her.
"Heh," Cammie said, rubbing one ear, "That was something right out of a fucking action movie. Anyway, in the immortal words of the Army of Darkness, 'Let's get the hell out of here', right?"
Jubilee shook her head to clear it of the ringing, having managed to land on her feet with a little twisting in mid-air, she just thanked her lucky stars she was that flexible. "Right,"
She didn't spare much of a glance for the building, just enough to see the crater that had been left behind where it had once sat, and know that if they didn't get out of here damn quick, they were going to be covered in guards.
Pripyat - Walking Wounded: Doug, Amanda, and James Barnes set up on top of a building to keep an eye on both of the other teams. In theory, they're the reserve, but a pretty haphazard one...
Intellectually, Doug understood the reason he, Amanda, and Bucky were stationed on top of a building in Pripyat with approximate line of sight to both pairs making their way toward their objectives. That didn't mean he had to like it. And he especially didn't have to like the equipment he'd been given - a bolt-action 51mm FN rifle. The scope was useful enough for tracking events as they were happening, but he would have rather just had the scope without the rifle, and especially without the possibility of shooting Mr. Barnes' stepdaughter while the man was right next to him if she overcame Sarah and Wade.
Despite his foul mood at the assignment, all of his worry was reserved for the rest of X-Force, including the other person next to him on the building top. "You doing okay?" he asked Amanda, quiet concern obvious in his voice. He knew Amanda's powers were rather inextricably related to cities these days, but he had no clue how they might react with the abandoned radioactive husk of one.
Huddled into a thick coat, shoulders hunched, the witch didn't seem to hear him at first, focussed as she was on what was happening below. Then she glanced up. "Huh?" she said, voice slurring slightly. "Oh, fine. Fine and dandy. Don't mind me."
The slurring was alarming. Even when Amanda had been 'high' on a city's aura, she hadn't slurred like that. "You know me better than that," he said quietly. "Talk to me?"
She hesitated, looking over at Bucky before pulling the collar of her coat up further. "Not great," she said quietly. "The energy here... 's all fucked up. Makes it hard t' think."
"She shouldn't be in the field, Ramsey. Stupid risk to take." Despite his age, Bucky stared into the cold wind without flinching. There was obviously something not entirely normal about him, although the old man had volunteered nothing. Over the course of hours, he'd proven the gaps between their experience and his, and wasn't past scathing criticism. But he had also been quietly essential in their plan, and had cleared up potential issues and roadblocks with an alacrity that they hadn't seen since Wisdom was planning ops. "And stop holding the damn rifle like an egg. If you have to take the shot, it has to be en extention of you. Otherwise, it's next to useless." He raised his binoculars to his eyes again.
"Yeah, well, I probably shouldn't be in the field either with taped ribs. Some old guy beat the crap out of me. And yet, here I am," Doug retorted. "When you're as thin on the ground as we are, beggars can't be choosers."
"Throwing shit against the wall and hoping some of it sticks isn't planning, son. It's more like blind optimism." Barnes said. "And if you're going to compromise the home of a potential enemy, having a better plan than small talk to delay them usually lets you avoid confrontation. Consider your ribs a little reminder of that."
"Something's happening," Amanda suddenly interrupted, leaning forward and grabbing onto the rooftop ledge. She was swaying slightly, but her gaze was steady, fixed on the group below.
Doug winced as he saw a concrete bench go sailing through the air at Wade, who managed to get underneath it and wound up in a grapple with the Winter Soldier. He leaned forward to get a closer look at the scene through the rifle's scope.
"Take the shot." Barnes said. "Transit through your idiot mercenary and take out the arm while she's beating him with it."
"I will -not-," Doug said coldly. "Not unless I have to." He was supposed to be the absolute last resort, as it wasn't as though he was a trained sniper with the accuracy that would entail. Besides, things were strained enough between him and Marie-Ange, he didn't think they would be improved by him shooting her new boyfriend, even if he could heal from it.
"I swear, I'm going to throw you both over the side if you don't stop it," Amanda grated, hands clenched on the concrete siding. The city's energy was wrong, broken and poisoned, and she felt like she was being pulled inside out by it, but she was damned if she was going to let her team down, even if she had to hold herself together by willpower alone. "Can we focus here? We're the back up, let's act like it."
Pripyat - Winter Soldier: Wade and Sarah are the heavy hitters, and they draw out the Soldier and take her on.
Wade had had to leave the majority of his fun toys at home, though he'd managed to pack enough sharp objects onto his person that the lack of firearms wasn't likely to be an issue. He'd wondered, briefly, if exposure to Chernobyl's residual radiation would have some sort of negative impact on his healing factor after all the chemo and immunotherapy, but he'd pushed that out of his head and gotten down to business, making sure he and Sarah got through the spotty perimeter line without incident.
Having spent the last week in the city, Sarah found the absolute silence of the Exclusion Zone a bit disconcerting. Left with nothing else, she focused on their footsteps as they made their way through the area. "I was never very patient with hide and seek. I don't suppose we could just call this chick a whore on her facebook so she'll come out of hiding to try to kick our asses?"
"You got her friended? Cause I kinda fail at social networking in general," Wade said. "Though we could probably yell 'you're a whore' in random areas just to see if we can get a rise out of her - I volunteer you to go first on that and then I'll alternate with something more creative." Eyes never stopping their constant search for danger, the mercenary spoke with a quiet sense of distraction, the words just never reaching an actual stopping point. "Something like how Malenkov sucked Stalin's dick and Khrushchev was a pussy."
Sarah laughed then, pulling a long club-like bone from her left thigh. "Let's get this party started." She ran the club up against a fence surrounding a nearby house, clicking every time it hit a different slat. "Come on out asshole! We can all get out of this hellhole once we kick your ass."
"Swing, batta batta batta, swing," Wade called, flicking his wrist so one of his throwing knives slid into his hand. "Those Russians really worked you over, sweetheart. Let's see how good you are against a good ole American boy - or girl." He briefly nodded in Sarah's direction. "I mean, who knows? You might even get a hit in here or there, since you were American before they worked their mind whammy magic on you - do you have wrinkles? I bet you do. Think you can kick our asses without getting a few more? Did the Russians have access to collagen injections back in the day?"
There wasn't an answer. Not verbally. No new voices rang out in the abandoned and decaying streets of Pripyat. It was silent, except for the wind and the echoes of Wade and Sarah's voices off the empty buildings.
There was a brief patter of footsteps as someone ran between buildings, and a flash of sunlight on metal, and then the bark of a single shot. The silence almost magnified the sound of the gunshot, and the echoes made it difficult to determine where the shot came from.
Wade turned toward the sound of feet, tracking a brief flash of movement before the bullet she'd fired grazed his thigh. He didn't react outwardly, just clenched his jaw and followed the logical path their mark would likely take given where she'd been and the direction she'd been heading. Their objective was to wear her down - nonlethal force was... not something Wade was particularly good at, but since they'd asked him so nicely and the chick they were going after had been all kinds of brainwashed, he figured he'd try harder this time. Also - chick. That sort of put a cap on what he'd be willing to do to her, anyway, even in the name of disarm and subdue. "Chickenshit," he called. "Yellow-skinned commie bitch!" Lowering his voice, he said to Sarah, "To our left and forward. We need to get to the higher contamination sites."
And that, Sarah remembered from the map she had studied before the mission, was straight ahead on the main road. "We're coming for you," she taunted.
The response was another gunshot, and then the echo of boots on concrete as their target ran between buildings. There were brief glimpses, dark hair, fatigues, a weapon, again the sunlight-on-metal. She'd seen the bones on the woman, been briefed on her targets. Mutants, dangerous and violent, one armored with her own bones. The other one, unknown but the shot hadn't slowed him, he could be like others she'd heard of, the ability to heal quickly - like her own. A kill would be difficult to confirm from a distance and she'd been ordered to confirm, to bring back the bodies if possible. He wanted them. It was stupid bullshit, "confirm the kill", "bring back the bodies".
The second shot nearly caught Wade's ass and he blinked for a moment before pursuing the woman on the opposite side of the buildings to him. "I know I got a fine physique," he called, motioning for Sarah to move ahead of him for a moment before following and cutting down an alley, "But you don't need to shoot me in the derriere, sweetheart. I'm open to experimentation. We can negotiate, if you're into the kinky stuff..." If he could get in close enough for a direct confrontation, even a short one, he'd be better able to figure out how best to take the woman down without killing her. All the theoretical talk in the world couldn't make up for good, old-fashioned hand-to-hand combat in these situations.
Sarah continued her path down the main road, eyes open for the slightest movement ahead of her. "Besides," she called, "if we have to listen to him whine the whole way home because he got shot in the ass, I will be forced to make your trip very unpleasant as well. Hell, I might do that anyway."
"Whatever," Wade called back, grinning despite himself. "You know you love it." Rounding a corner, he just barely caught sight of his mark before she twisted out of his sight again. She was good. He'd give her that. But he needed more information. "C'mon, Rebecca - this is no fun. It's like hide 'n seek with all the lights on. Don't you think those commie bastards did right by you? Are you scared we'll actually prove we're better? Your dad's all kinds of worried about you. Ever wonder what happened to the world while you were all jacked up in stasis?" Closer, closer - he had to get in closer. He reached the building she'd disappeared behind - at least herding her toward the radioactive contamination site was going well.
Closer. The man's voice was louder, the woman's less so but she had to be the less erratic of the two.The bone-armoed woman talked less. They had to be following her to be louder. Good.
She knew the ruined buildings, had mapped them in her head every time she returned here, knew what was sound and what would fall apart at a touch. Her terrain, this was hers as much as it was anyone's, abandoned by government and left to fall to radiation and age and rust and weather.
The Winter Soldier paused at the empty window of the building she'd crept inside. Not long, enough for them to see her, enough to send a silent message. Bring it. "Rikki, baby," Wade said, grinning as he caught sight of her in the window. "I'd serenade you, but you shot me. I don't think you deserve any lyrical inspiration right now." He tossed his throwing knife at her silhouette, not expecting to hit her but needing to see how fast she reacted. "Is that a wrinkle I see there? I was totally right. The Reds never were all that good at stealing and implementing technology..."
"Does she have a walker? Just kick it out from under her. I bet somebody that old has to use it as a gun stand in order to shoot straight." Sarah turned the corner, headed towards Wade's voice, and what she assumed was Rebecca Barnes. "Don't start the fun part without me!"
The knife went into a pocket as she ducked back out of the way - never pass up a chance to use the enemy's arms against them. They were practically being led by the nose, which made her suspicious. Did they know where she went when the missions were done? Did they know the air and soil and dust of the city would make them sick? No matter, even if the fight went on longer than necessary, this dead city was still her terrain. Home team advantage and the thought made Rikki Barnes stop for a moment.
Just a moment, and she continued, making the glimpses longer. Let them see her, follow her into the dead zone and then she could complete her objective and be done with them.
"No walker," Wade yelled, eyes narrowing as he continued herding their mark forward. He saw Sarah and motioned toward the last spot where he'd seen Rebecca Barnes as he pulled one of his burner cells from his pocket. She moved quick, demonstrating a familiarity with the layout of the land - she wasn't running scared. The scales might be tipping, but at least they weren't uninformed. "Baby," he called, pausing for a moment to scroll through the ringtones he'd downloaded to the mobile device. "Baby, I think I changed my mind." Stepping out into the open, he raised his phone and faced the spot where he figured Miss Barnes would be, the volume turned all the way up, and let Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" blare from the cell's tinny little speakers.
This was not a blasted game, what kind of people were they? She thought that they must have sent madmen after her, madmen or idiots and she didn't think he was an idiot. No idiot would have survived long enough to get into the exclusion zone. Mad,and therefore dangerous. The patriot, the martyr, those could be accounted for. Madmen you just put down like a sick horse.
She stepped out of the shadows, and towards the street, hands in the air. Let them get close, bring the fight to her. They didn't have guns, or explosives, if they had they would have used them by now. She could have picked them off, but for the order to bring the bodies in.
Bracing his hand over his heart, Wade started singing with the song. "All my instincts, they return and the grand facade, so soon will burn, without a noise, without my pride, I reach out from the inside..." At least she'd stopped running. Now they just had to corner her. Or disarm and freaking subdue. He hated those orders. "C'mon, baby - sing with me!" The mercenary moved forward, hyper aware of every move his mark made.
Sarah had to give Wade credit-- he was absolutely insane. She liked that about him, really. She smiled brightly, bone club in hand, and stepped forward on Rebecca's other side. She was going to have to decide who to focus on first. "If you give up now, I can make him stop singing. I think there's duct tape back in the car." Surrender? No.
Reach down and toss a flashbang grenade with her artificial arm? Yes. And then run again, but this time cutting around them, to what had once been a park, just enough to get as far out of the range of the noise and light as she could. It would buy her time to choose when and who she fought and how.
"How you gonna do me like that?" Wade asked, stepping back from the concussive blast and the light, head turned to the side. A few second later, shrugging off the heat from the detonation, he blinked to get his eyes back to normal and moved to intercept, if he could. He was used to these kinds of tactics, though he preferred the scenarios where he had a gun and could just shoot people to this one. "I know I didn't bring you flowers, but jeez." He paused and sat the phone on a window ledge, then silently moved off. The song would end soon and, at that point, he had another he could just sing from memory if he needed to. But first, he was going to try some sneaking. He could always just tackle the woman - guns were only so good, after all, and most of their usefulness was the fact that they were generally ranged weapons. Wade was pretty sure he could take her in hand to hand. Or a knife fight.
Sarah rolled her eyes, and finally after she stopped seeing stars, she called "You know, you're not really doing a fantastic job of proving that you're not all flash. Are you actually going to fight us, or are you going to keep hiding from us?" She moved carefully against the side of a building in the direction she had seen Rikki go in as the flashbomb go off.
It would be a hard fight regardless of who she went after first. The man could heal, the wound where her shot had grazed him had stopped bleeding, or at least it wasn't as bloody as it should have been and he hadn't bandaged it. The woman had the bones, a club made from her own thigh.
Time to slow one of them down. The flashbang hasn't done enough, maybe a demonstration of sheer brute strength would. A concrete park bench, the stone flaking and crumbling but still solid made perfectly serviceable projectile. She ripped it from the rusted brackets holding it to the ground and spun in an arc, throwing the thing out towards her target.
Wade ducked just as the ringtone ended and the cement bench went flying over his head. He glanced at it as it impacted the building behind him, effectively crushing the burner phone, then turned and grinned at Rebecca Barnes. Waggling his eyebrows, he did a little MC Hammer step and sang, "Oh Rikki, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind - hey Rikki!" And then he went on the offensive - as if his singing voice wasn't offensive enough. He'd need a bit of preparation to heft something that'd been bolted to the ground, so he didn't go for the collapsing mailbox - he chucked a throwing knife at the woman's thigh and moved closer. Part of this whole scheme was to tag-team her and get that arm off her. That meant they had to get close enough to tag team her.
He was close enough that she could go for a tackle and aim for the already injured leg. At least the missed shot would be of some use. She ignored the knife, she was fast enough to dodge that, even if she couldn't quite dodge gunfire. The Winter Soldier dropped her shoulder, the metal-encased one, reinforced with the cybernetics that connected her nerves to her artificial arm. The metal socket acted as armor, it would take the worst of the impact from the tackle, even if her target was wearing body armor.
Instead of attempting to deflect the blow, Wade rolled with it. He let his injured leg buckle beneath him and allowed Rebecca's momentum to carry her over him. Continuing that movement, he threw her over his head, toward Sarah's position, and then righted himself, twisting to watch as the women met so he'd know when it was his turn again.
Sarah swung the bone club at Rikki's midsection, hoping it might connect before the woman had a chance to fully stop from her previous charge and ready to jump out of the way if she looked to be changing direction. "Come and get me!"
The Winter Soldier had trained so much that her reactions and reflexes were second nature at this point. So in the time it took her brain to process 'second attacker, weapon', she was already pivoting to block the bone with her artificial arm. The club shattered against the metal, and she continued through, the fingers of her flesh-and-blood hand jabbing toward Sarah's throat.
When Rebecca got close enough to reach her throat, Sarah thrust her bone covered knee towards the other woman's midsection with as much force as she could muster. That big metal arm wouldn't do her a whole lot of good if she was winded.
Take a knee strike to land a throat jab. It was a fair trade-off. The jab hit, and so did Sarah's knee hard into the Winter Soldier's lower ribs, and she staggered back a step. Analysis said her rib might have cracked, the bone armor was harder than she'd expected, and she could feel pain as she tried to breathe.
She'd been in worse fights, the cracked rib would heal, she could fight through the pain. She'd had worse pain, and she spun to approach the man, now that her female opponent was occupied with a bruised windpipe.
Eyes narrowing, Wade used some of his enhanced speed and reflexes to position himself behind his target, arm clamping around her throat as he partially lifted her off the ground. A sleeper hold... might not be effective in this instance, but he was gonna give it a go, at least. And he was going to be very, very mindful of elbows and feet that might attempt to do him some kind of damage. "That wasn't very nice, Rikki." His voice was a low growl. "Poor Sarah needs her windpipe. It's important for things. Like breathing."
It wasn't an elbow - elbow strikes on this man would not get her anywhere, but regardless of healing or speed, everyone had noses. She brought her head back hard and fast, right into Wade's face and repeated it several times until his arm around her throat loosened. Breaking the hold was easier once he was distracted by the headbutting and she could twist his thumb until the muscles gave and she fell to the ground in a crouch.
Wade dodged the worst of the headbutts, though he was going to have to have somebody reset his nose before the bone and cartilage started healing again, otherwise it'd just be a bitch later on. Before she could release his hand, he used his free one to grip her wrist, twisting as he attempted to pull her off-balance. He was waiting for Sarah, sparing the woman the barest of glances before turning his whole attention back toward his target in case she tried to return the favor he'd just given her.
Sarah rushed in then, still breathing rather heavily, and sent a heavy boot into Rikki to help topple her. If they could get her on the ground, perhaps they could get her pinned and get that damned arm off her.
A simple wrist toss wouldn't have been enough to flip her, but the boot in her side caught her at just the exact wrong moment. She swore - in English - a single "Damn!" as she hit the ground and then rolled, coming back up with pistol drawn and firing. She emptied the rest of the clip, firing carelessly.
Most of the bullets were stray, but Sarah wasn't fast enough to dodge the one that came close enough to clip her arm, just below a patch of bone armour. She winced, and snarled at Rikki, hoping to get her attention focused away from Wade. "Lucky bitch."
Considering his proximity to the Winter Soldier when she started firing, Wade wound up with a slug landing solidly in his thigh. Luckily, it was the one she'd grazed earlier, so he was already compensating for it. He grimaced, though, knowing it'd be a bitch and a half later but focusing on the target at hand because Jesus, if they could just get her on the ground for long enough, they might be able to get that arm off - it was just keeping her on the ground that wound up being the issue. Pulling several small throwing knives from various hiding places on his person, Wade waited just long enough for Rikki's attention to flicker toward Sarah before he began tossing them at their mark. If he could just disable her long enough - that was all they really needed to do. Because in the end, it was disable her or let their man in the sniper nest take the shot for them. Which, if you really thought about it, was counter to the whole goddamn operation. And Wade wasn't one to let other people do his jobs for him.
The first knife whipped over the Soldier's shoulder as she ducked and darted to one side. The second and third one were intercepted by her prosthetic arm and ricocheted off. The fourth tore at her uniform jacket and drew a hint of blood from her belly. The fifth one landed square in the meat of her thigh, and she staggered. She hissed, jerked it from her leg, flipped it between her fingers, heedless of the blood on it, and returned it at Wade with interest.
Wade ducked. There was really no other way to describe the rather ungraceful way he avoided that knife. So he ducked and, despite the pain in his leg, he felt some small bit of vindication because at least her leg hurt now, too. "Disarm and subdue," he reminded himself, rolling to the side before pushing himself up and saying, "Y'know, on second thought, I'm not thinking you look so fine, Rikki."
That arm of Rikki's might be cybernetic, Sarah thought, but her legs were still vulnerable, as evidenced by the blood seeping from one of her thighs. She pulled a long club-like bone from her own hip, and swung the weapon at Rikki's knees. "Go down and stay down, bitch!"
There was a small part of her, that had studied to be able to pass as a nurse, so long ago, that knew just how much pain the bone-covered woman must have been in when she pulled that... thing... from her leg. The memory of a quick and intense course of nurse training came up, how to treat gunshot wounds and knife wounds and tie off her own stitches and Rikki Barnes was lost for a second, scrambling to get away from the two people attacking her and the club connected with her leg and she grunted, and blinked twice, and then lunged for Sarah, punching at her face with the cybernetic arm.
Quick as a whip, Wade kicked the knee Sarah had hit hardest from behind to drop Rikki and then put his own knee in the center of her back as he forced her down to the ground. He grabbed both her arms, and pulled them back, wary of the cybernetic one, and then nodded to Sarah. "Knock her out for me, chica?"
Sarah would have used the bone in her hand to knock Rikki out, but there was that pesky order not to kill her. Instead she made a fist and punched the woman hard in the jaw, just below her right ear. "No kill operations are just so unsatisfying."
The Soldier struggled against Wade, trying to buck him off, but without a way to gain purchase with either arm, she had no way to get leverage against his grip. Her head thrashed back and forth, and her toes scrabbled against the concrete, trying to get her knees underneath her. And then Sarah's fist struck her jaw, and it blended with the memory of a Viet Cong rifle butt hitting her in just the same spot before darkness reached up and dragged her down into unconsciousness.
"Nice," Wade said, grinning despite himself. He checked their mark's pulse, then nodded in Sarah's direction and muttered, "You are so, so right about no kill operations." Keeping his knee firmly placed, he pulled a plastic tie from his pocket and secured it around Rikki's wrist after hooking it through her belt loop. Wade tightened the plastic, then pulled Selma from her sheath and cut the sleeve off Rikki's shirt and making short work of the cybernetic arm. Tossing it to Sarah, he hit the comm hooked through his ear and said, "Sexy sniper man, you come pick up lady friend now, Wade only charge five dolla."
---
Corporate Warfare: Marie-Ange, Wanda, and Emma go to the Kronas Corporation's Moscow offices to confront Lukin. Lukin, however, is ready for them.
The large red fireball of the Kronas Corporation's logo looked far more ominous in the evening dark and low lighting of Tower 2000 after working hours. X-Force had managed to confirm that Lukin was in the offices working late that evening, and the other offices around Kronas' were empty for the night.
Wanda stood in the shadows across the way and looked at the building critically. So far, their reports had all panned out ... but they were all hyper aware that it could change at less than a moments notice. "Ready?" she asked quietly, turning her head slightly to look at Marie-Ange.
Marie-Ange did not -say- she wished Remy was there, but she thought it, and it was probably clear enough for Emma to "hear". It was not a lack of confidence, exactly. She'd run operations, in New Orleans and before it was just that her team had already had a car thrown at them, been soundly trounced by the downstairs elderly neighbor and half the team was in a radioactive zone and she was starting to question her own ability to get this done without further harm to her people. "I just want to get this done so we can return Mr. Barnes daughter to him."
"Nice in theory," said Emma, bleakly. 'But you're assuming Mr. Barnes' daughter wants to be returned to him." Despite the coldness of her words, Emma sent a tendril of reassurance to Marie-Ange, a warm sliver of confidence. "Nonetheless, Mr. Lukin is rather a stain upon the world. Cry havoc, Wanda?"
"Emma, you always say the nicest things to me." She pointed off to the side. "According to the building plans, there is an emergency door - I can probably disrupt the alarm from going off for a few seconds and we will be less noticed than if we go through the front or the loading docks. Which will probably have physical guards as well." Wanda shrugged as they started to make their way closer. "The door being opened will probably be noticed after we are in, though."
"Once we are in, we are visible. All being noticed will do is bring the guards to us instead of us going to them." Marie-Ange suggested. "And the more of them there are looking for us, the fewer there are personally protecting Mister Stain Upon The World." Who most assuredly had his own protection team, but would send in the fodder first. You did not waste good people if the lesser trained ones could do the job.
"Then let's make sure we are not visible," said Emma. "Perhaps a touch of chaos to get us in and go from there?" Emma nodded at Wanda and the team began their move.
Wanda wasted no time when they reached the door to send a line of chaos flying as she reached for the handle. The alarm system hiccuped long enough for them to hustle through and shut it behind them, leaving them in a quiet hallway that stretched quite a ways down before turning to the right. "These men never want to be on the ground floor," she commented as they started to move. "There has to be a flight of stairs around here somewhere."
The fire stairs were in the middle of the building, easily found once they re-oriented themselves in the hallway. Marie-Ange held the door as Wanda and Emma passed her and then let it shut slowly to keep noise to a bare minimum. Voices might be overlooked as overnight cleaning staff or late shift employees, as long as they were careful but a slamming fire door might raise some eyebrows. "If he has a penthouse office I am going to personally kick him in the throat." she said, looking up - and up - and up - the stairwell.
#Then you had best have your kicking boots on,# said Emma and her words were touched with a mental sigh. She still regretted what she'd had to do to those Louboutins. #Slow and steady, ladies, and lots of rests. I like to think we could run up all the stairs if we needed to, but I'd prefer not to waste my energy.#
"I'll take the lead," Wanda said, reining in her urge to take the stairs three at a time. Emma was right - she could do it but how much energy would be wasted considering the amount of guards in the building? Time constraints were all well and good but a time line doesn't matter much if you're getting kicked in the face because you're winded. It was on the fourth landing when their opposition decided to show itself; Wanda dodged backward, almost knocking into the woman behind her, when a door was kicked in from the other end and nearly took her out. Regaining her balance, she ducked low as the guard swung around and caught her shoulder in his sternum, driving him into the wall.
Marie-Ange's boots had not been designed for kicking but they worked well enough, and the other guard soon found himself on the ground holding one now-shattered kneecap and howling as she put her entire weight on it. "Keys, gentlemen. The faster I have keys, the sooner that we leave you tied up in a corner."
The keys were handed over as quickly as Wanda's guard could remember what hands were and how they worked.
"How sweet," said Emma to the man. "But we really don't have time to tie you up." She reached out with her power, finding little resistance from either mind before her. For a moment she caressed the men with her thoughts, searching out their weaknesses, and then the psychic equivalent of a punch sent them both into unconsciousness. The men slumped indelicately to the floor.
"After you," said Emma, gesturing courteously to Wanda and Marie-Ange to go in front of her. The women began to ascend the stairs again.
* Four guards trained their guns on the door that led to the interior of the penthouse while their comrades hustled their boss further into the background. By now, they were all aware that the intruders were mutants and well-trained but the ones that were waiting for them were the best in the entire building. They knew they had to hit them fast and hard the moment the women came in through the door and they might have gotten at least one of them ... If Wanda hadn't blown a hole through the wall next to the door, sending debris flying like shrapnel into the closest guard. Pieces somehow managed to hit the weaker parts of his armor, sending him stumbling backwards as she burst out a moment later, taking him down hard to the ground as the other three tried to react.
Aleksandr Lukin looked far more at home in the dim light of the offices and the chaos of a firefight than he had in the bright lights of the boardroom. His tie and sport coat had disappeared, and he had a pistol in his hand, though down at one side as he waved and shouted directions to his security force. The guards' training showed, as they reacted quickly to the unexpected. They scattered, each taking cover behind desks and filing cabinets while one of the ones at Lukin's side pulled him out of the direct line to the breach. The steady roar of disciplined firing quickly began echoing in the office.
Marie-Ange's imaged walls - all grey cinderblocks like the polaroid photograph she had in her hand - came up as the shots went off, and went right back down after the bullets hit the walls. It was purely a delay measure, but she was the defensive arm of the trio at the moment and there to cover Wanda because Emma in diamond form was bulletproof - but Wanda was not. The dissolved walls were replaced in the pause between shots and the confusion about where the things had come from and where they had gone and the three women pressed forward.
"Really?" said Emma conversationally to the guard she was walking towards as bullets bounced off her diamond form. "Shooting at me? Not the most useful thing you can do." She shivered deliciously as a bullet ricocheted from between her diamond breasts. "Though if you keep aiming there, I'll start to think that it's foreplay." Whether it was what she said or sheer confusion at the fact that point-blank shots were making no difference, the guard didn't move quickly enough, with Emma reaching him before he thought to change position and snatching the gun from his hands. "Shall I shoot you or do you want to play?' said Emma and then grinned as the guard's hand suddenly filled with a baton telescoping to full length. "Oh good," she said. "I do like it when they play."
There were too many guards, too many chaos lines, for Wanda to simply take Lukin out of commission as easily as she might have if they were just in a room together. And considering she never did enjoy being shot at - not everyone could be Emma Frost - she'd prefer a faster end to this. The man under her wasn't breathing too well as she rolled off of him, keeping low. The strings dictated her next action as she slapped a hand down on the floor and sent a chaos wave rolling off to the side. Several men to their left were rushing forward when they heard an ominous rumbling from beneath their feet and every step or even breath seemed to make the floor shake and shiver. Wanda grinned sharply and threw another bolt at their feet, letting it eat through carpet and floor, concrete and all along with her first action. One more tug of the strings and suddenly a gaping hole in the floor swallowed some of the men while two more were left scrambling to reach safety.
The crash of masonry falling, and the shout of the men falling with it, created a chaos all its own in the office space. One of the guards shouted in Lukin's ear, struggling to make himself heard over the noise, and the words incomprehensible to anyone beyond arm's length. Lukin struggled against the arm on his shirt for a moment, the fire of combat in his eyes, but the guard shouted again and shoved Lukin roughly toward a small balcony area.
As the cacophony of grinding stone and toppling office furnishings began to die down, a different noise rose to take its place - the fast, low-pitched whupwhupwhup of a spinning helicopter rotor. The sound grew louder, and the small plants on the balcony began to flatten as its source rose into view through the plate glass windows.
The Mi-24 helicopter, or its NATO reporting name, 'Hind', was a combination gunship and troop transport, and a workhorse for almost 50 different air forces worldwide. Its stubby side wings wobbled slightly as the pilot struggled to keep it steady so close to a building. As a harness was flung to Lukin and strapped around him, a higher-pitched whine could be heard over the sound of the rotors - the 12.7mm Gatling gun under the nose spooling up.
For a moment, Wanda just stared, completely blind sided by Lukin's ability to bring a helicopter down for his own personal use. The sight of the gatling, however, startled her right back out of her shock. "Down!" she shouted. "Everyone down the fucking hole!" Feet first, trusting in her luck to help her land on her feet.
Marie-Ange hit the floor below back first, and only managed to spread out her arms just in time to take away some of the impact. "Emma, get anything you can from him, I do not care how harsh you have to be." she grunted out, not even bothering to get up yet. Not that Emma needed direction but Marie-Ange was hurting, tired and this entire mission had been a disaster.
At the first sensation of another mind touching his, Lukin grunted, clutching his hands to his temples and marshalling his mental training to give the blonde American as little as he could. "~Get us out of here now!~" he yelled at the pilot, knowing that distance would make the mental connection more difficult, and then impossible, to maintain. The noise of the rotor moved off into the distance and in a minute or so was gone.
Pripyat - Stasis Chamber: Jubilee and Cammie hit the old Directorate X depot that houses the stasis chamber that the Winter Soldier has been kept in all these years, along with Lukin's other hand-me-downs from General Karpov.
The Exclusion Zone was established soon after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, in order to evacuate the local population and to prevent people from entering the heavily contaminated territory. The area adjoining the site of the disaster was originally divided into 4 concentric zones. The most contaminated zone had a radius of 30 km (19 mi) from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The border of the zone was later adjusted to better parallel the locations of highest contamination. Any residential, civil or business activities in the zone are legally prohibited and punishable. But thankfully for X-Force, the perimeter of the zone was somewhat inconsistently patrolled, allowing a small team to gain access.
"Something tells me I should be glad I'm never intending to have kids," Jubilee said, her voice soft, not carrying beyond the range of her team-mate. She waited, counting down in her head the gap they'd need between patrols. "Come on, let's get this thing done and get out of here."
"Yeah, that's never going to be a problem for me either," Cammie noted. For biological reasons and not actually wanting to. Though given the mad-scientist mother, there was more than one reason to not want to reproduce. She cracked her knuckles, "So, let's get this show on the road, eh Sparkles?"
"Sparkles? Dude, what am I? Like, a my little pony?" Jubilee asked, but she was grinning as she said it, and she winked before taking off across the compound and darting into the shadows at a back door, thieves tools already out as she examined the lock. "Keep an eye for guards, yeah?"
"That one that no one ever bought," Cammie lamented with mock sadness, "I'm looking," she said, and she was. It was mostly quiet, but there'd likely be some sort of patrol type thing by soon. In which case she'd punch them. And be happy.
"You wound me, madam," Jubilee joked, tongue poking out slightly as she worked the lock, a small sound of satisfaction escaping as it clicked open. "See, bleeding, totally bleeding."
She pushed the door open and motioned for Cammie to step in ahead of her, already sliding the tools she'd used into an inner pocket of her jacket.
Cammie followed, "Yeah, I know. I'm horrible. So how about we make both of us feel better by blowing this place into tiny little pieces."
Jubilee pulled the C4 out of the slim-line backpack she was wearing and handed off half to Cammie. "Here, go spread 'em around, dude. We wanna make sure we take this place out good and proper."
"I've always wanted to spend a night in wanton destruction," Cammie said, going about her task with a lot of relish, "Tell me they'll be a little crater in the ground and lots of smoke."
"Join X-force, ride the rides," Jubilee muttered with a grin, placing another charge of C4 and taking the time to look over the place as well. Nothing except what they'd already expected so far, and there didn't appear to be any traps or alarms set on the place. "Lots of smoke, yes. Crater? Well, we'll see. You good?"
"Golden," Cammie said, placing the last charge and cracking her knuckles. "Let's blow this joint."
"I think that pun just hurt my soul," Jubilee replied, heading for the door as she chucked small balls of plasma to her left and right, bringing them to hover close to the C4, once she and Cammie were clear, she'd detonate them. "Okay, time to play 'let's avoid all the highly trained guards and not end up dead."
"As a good pun should. Puns, better than guns and twice as amusing," Cammie said happily, "And sure, I guess I could try to avoid the guards. Maybe they'll get off their asses and make it a challenge."
The ratcheting sound of the bolt being pulled back on an AK-74 might as well have been a nonverbal "challenge accepted". A pair of guards stood outside the exit, their rifles trained on the pair of women.
"Dude, you just had to jinx it, didn't you?" Jubilee said, face turned toward Cammie as she threw a wave of sparks at both guard's eyes. "Never, like, tempt fate like that."
The guards were ex-Spetsnaz, and trained in how to deal with things like flash-bang grenades. The problem was that there was usually some kind of sound of a pin or grenade hitting the floor to prepare you for those sorts of things. An immediate wave of disorienting light was impossible to prepare for. The guards both rightly assumed that the sparks were the first part of an attack, and fired more-or-less blindly at where they thought the women had been. Both were off the mark, their rifles pulling high and over Jubilee and Cammie's heads.
"Sorry," Cammie said way too sweetly before pulling the bandages off her left hand with ease and moving in gracefully before hitting one of the guys upside the head. Not hard enough to kill, but enough to cause extreme pain and illness rather suddenly, "I just can't help myself."
The guard that had been touched by Cammie wavered on his feet, trying to fight through the sudden waves of nausea to bring his weapon to bear. Cammie's power was too much for his body, though, and he collapsed to his knees, emptying the contents of his stomach on the ground.
Jubilee took on the second soldier, using a four finger punch to his throat before dancing back out of the way and sending another shower of sparks directly into his face.
The second guard tried to react to Jubilee, but the flashes in front of his eyes had completely disoriented him, and then the punch to the throat had him in a similar pose to his comrade, albeit simply wheezing in an attempt to get oxygen through his windpipe. Neither man was in a position to do anything to the women.
Seeing them both down, and aware that they needed to not engage any more then absolutely neccessary, Jubilee gestured for Cammie to take off ahead of her before she turned toward the building and allowed the control that had kept the sparks floating above the C4 to loosen and drop, detonating the explosives with a solid booming sound that was so loud it set Jubilee's ears to ringing and blew her several feet into the air.
It wasn't what she'd been expecting, although she supposed since she'd never done anything like it before, expectations were made to be broken, or whatever it was you said with those things. She was babbling in her head, that was probably a sign of shock, but she didn't have time to think about it too much, not with the ground coming up so fast toward her.
"Heh," Cammie said, rubbing one ear, "That was something right out of a fucking action movie. Anyway, in the immortal words of the Army of Darkness, 'Let's get the hell out of here', right?"
Jubilee shook her head to clear it of the ringing, having managed to land on her feet with a little twisting in mid-air, she just thanked her lucky stars she was that flexible. "Right,"
She didn't spare much of a glance for the building, just enough to see the crater that had been left behind where it had once sat, and know that if they didn't get out of here damn quick, they were going to be covered in guards.
Pripyat - Walking Wounded: Doug, Amanda, and James Barnes set up on top of a building to keep an eye on both of the other teams. In theory, they're the reserve, but a pretty haphazard one...
Intellectually, Doug understood the reason he, Amanda, and Bucky were stationed on top of a building in Pripyat with approximate line of sight to both pairs making their way toward their objectives. That didn't mean he had to like it. And he especially didn't have to like the equipment he'd been given - a bolt-action 51mm FN rifle. The scope was useful enough for tracking events as they were happening, but he would have rather just had the scope without the rifle, and especially without the possibility of shooting Mr. Barnes' stepdaughter while the man was right next to him if she overcame Sarah and Wade.
Despite his foul mood at the assignment, all of his worry was reserved for the rest of X-Force, including the other person next to him on the building top. "You doing okay?" he asked Amanda, quiet concern obvious in his voice. He knew Amanda's powers were rather inextricably related to cities these days, but he had no clue how they might react with the abandoned radioactive husk of one.
Huddled into a thick coat, shoulders hunched, the witch didn't seem to hear him at first, focussed as she was on what was happening below. Then she glanced up. "Huh?" she said, voice slurring slightly. "Oh, fine. Fine and dandy. Don't mind me."
The slurring was alarming. Even when Amanda had been 'high' on a city's aura, she hadn't slurred like that. "You know me better than that," he said quietly. "Talk to me?"
She hesitated, looking over at Bucky before pulling the collar of her coat up further. "Not great," she said quietly. "The energy here... 's all fucked up. Makes it hard t' think."
"She shouldn't be in the field, Ramsey. Stupid risk to take." Despite his age, Bucky stared into the cold wind without flinching. There was obviously something not entirely normal about him, although the old man had volunteered nothing. Over the course of hours, he'd proven the gaps between their experience and his, and wasn't past scathing criticism. But he had also been quietly essential in their plan, and had cleared up potential issues and roadblocks with an alacrity that they hadn't seen since Wisdom was planning ops. "And stop holding the damn rifle like an egg. If you have to take the shot, it has to be en extention of you. Otherwise, it's next to useless." He raised his binoculars to his eyes again.
"Yeah, well, I probably shouldn't be in the field either with taped ribs. Some old guy beat the crap out of me. And yet, here I am," Doug retorted. "When you're as thin on the ground as we are, beggars can't be choosers."
"Throwing shit against the wall and hoping some of it sticks isn't planning, son. It's more like blind optimism." Barnes said. "And if you're going to compromise the home of a potential enemy, having a better plan than small talk to delay them usually lets you avoid confrontation. Consider your ribs a little reminder of that."
"Something's happening," Amanda suddenly interrupted, leaning forward and grabbing onto the rooftop ledge. She was swaying slightly, but her gaze was steady, fixed on the group below.
Doug winced as he saw a concrete bench go sailing through the air at Wade, who managed to get underneath it and wound up in a grapple with the Winter Soldier. He leaned forward to get a closer look at the scene through the rifle's scope.
"Take the shot." Barnes said. "Transit through your idiot mercenary and take out the arm while she's beating him with it."
"I will -not-," Doug said coldly. "Not unless I have to." He was supposed to be the absolute last resort, as it wasn't as though he was a trained sniper with the accuracy that would entail. Besides, things were strained enough between him and Marie-Ange, he didn't think they would be improved by him shooting her new boyfriend, even if he could heal from it.
"I swear, I'm going to throw you both over the side if you don't stop it," Amanda grated, hands clenched on the concrete siding. The city's energy was wrong, broken and poisoned, and she felt like she was being pulled inside out by it, but she was damned if she was going to let her team down, even if she had to hold herself together by willpower alone. "Can we focus here? We're the back up, let's act like it."
Pripyat - Winter Soldier: Wade and Sarah are the heavy hitters, and they draw out the Soldier and take her on.
Wade had had to leave the majority of his fun toys at home, though he'd managed to pack enough sharp objects onto his person that the lack of firearms wasn't likely to be an issue. He'd wondered, briefly, if exposure to Chernobyl's residual radiation would have some sort of negative impact on his healing factor after all the chemo and immunotherapy, but he'd pushed that out of his head and gotten down to business, making sure he and Sarah got through the spotty perimeter line without incident.
Having spent the last week in the city, Sarah found the absolute silence of the Exclusion Zone a bit disconcerting. Left with nothing else, she focused on their footsteps as they made their way through the area. "I was never very patient with hide and seek. I don't suppose we could just call this chick a whore on her facebook so she'll come out of hiding to try to kick our asses?"
"You got her friended? Cause I kinda fail at social networking in general," Wade said. "Though we could probably yell 'you're a whore' in random areas just to see if we can get a rise out of her - I volunteer you to go first on that and then I'll alternate with something more creative." Eyes never stopping their constant search for danger, the mercenary spoke with a quiet sense of distraction, the words just never reaching an actual stopping point. "Something like how Malenkov sucked Stalin's dick and Khrushchev was a pussy."
Sarah laughed then, pulling a long club-like bone from her left thigh. "Let's get this party started." She ran the club up against a fence surrounding a nearby house, clicking every time it hit a different slat. "Come on out asshole! We can all get out of this hellhole once we kick your ass."
"Swing, batta batta batta, swing," Wade called, flicking his wrist so one of his throwing knives slid into his hand. "Those Russians really worked you over, sweetheart. Let's see how good you are against a good ole American boy - or girl." He briefly nodded in Sarah's direction. "I mean, who knows? You might even get a hit in here or there, since you were American before they worked their mind whammy magic on you - do you have wrinkles? I bet you do. Think you can kick our asses without getting a few more? Did the Russians have access to collagen injections back in the day?"
There wasn't an answer. Not verbally. No new voices rang out in the abandoned and decaying streets of Pripyat. It was silent, except for the wind and the echoes of Wade and Sarah's voices off the empty buildings.
There was a brief patter of footsteps as someone ran between buildings, and a flash of sunlight on metal, and then the bark of a single shot. The silence almost magnified the sound of the gunshot, and the echoes made it difficult to determine where the shot came from.
Wade turned toward the sound of feet, tracking a brief flash of movement before the bullet she'd fired grazed his thigh. He didn't react outwardly, just clenched his jaw and followed the logical path their mark would likely take given where she'd been and the direction she'd been heading. Their objective was to wear her down - nonlethal force was... not something Wade was particularly good at, but since they'd asked him so nicely and the chick they were going after had been all kinds of brainwashed, he figured he'd try harder this time. Also - chick. That sort of put a cap on what he'd be willing to do to her, anyway, even in the name of disarm and subdue. "Chickenshit," he called. "Yellow-skinned commie bitch!" Lowering his voice, he said to Sarah, "To our left and forward. We need to get to the higher contamination sites."
And that, Sarah remembered from the map she had studied before the mission, was straight ahead on the main road. "We're coming for you," she taunted.
The response was another gunshot, and then the echo of boots on concrete as their target ran between buildings. There were brief glimpses, dark hair, fatigues, a weapon, again the sunlight-on-metal. She'd seen the bones on the woman, been briefed on her targets. Mutants, dangerous and violent, one armored with her own bones. The other one, unknown but the shot hadn't slowed him, he could be like others she'd heard of, the ability to heal quickly - like her own. A kill would be difficult to confirm from a distance and she'd been ordered to confirm, to bring back the bodies if possible. He wanted them. It was stupid bullshit, "confirm the kill", "bring back the bodies".
The second shot nearly caught Wade's ass and he blinked for a moment before pursuing the woman on the opposite side of the buildings to him. "I know I got a fine physique," he called, motioning for Sarah to move ahead of him for a moment before following and cutting down an alley, "But you don't need to shoot me in the derriere, sweetheart. I'm open to experimentation. We can negotiate, if you're into the kinky stuff..." If he could get in close enough for a direct confrontation, even a short one, he'd be better able to figure out how best to take the woman down without killing her. All the theoretical talk in the world couldn't make up for good, old-fashioned hand-to-hand combat in these situations.
Sarah continued her path down the main road, eyes open for the slightest movement ahead of her. "Besides," she called, "if we have to listen to him whine the whole way home because he got shot in the ass, I will be forced to make your trip very unpleasant as well. Hell, I might do that anyway."
"Whatever," Wade called back, grinning despite himself. "You know you love it." Rounding a corner, he just barely caught sight of his mark before she twisted out of his sight again. She was good. He'd give her that. But he needed more information. "C'mon, Rebecca - this is no fun. It's like hide 'n seek with all the lights on. Don't you think those commie bastards did right by you? Are you scared we'll actually prove we're better? Your dad's all kinds of worried about you. Ever wonder what happened to the world while you were all jacked up in stasis?" Closer, closer - he had to get in closer. He reached the building she'd disappeared behind - at least herding her toward the radioactive contamination site was going well.
Closer. The man's voice was louder, the woman's less so but she had to be the less erratic of the two.The bone-armoed woman talked less. They had to be following her to be louder. Good.
She knew the ruined buildings, had mapped them in her head every time she returned here, knew what was sound and what would fall apart at a touch. Her terrain, this was hers as much as it was anyone's, abandoned by government and left to fall to radiation and age and rust and weather.
The Winter Soldier paused at the empty window of the building she'd crept inside. Not long, enough for them to see her, enough to send a silent message. Bring it. "Rikki, baby," Wade said, grinning as he caught sight of her in the window. "I'd serenade you, but you shot me. I don't think you deserve any lyrical inspiration right now." He tossed his throwing knife at her silhouette, not expecting to hit her but needing to see how fast she reacted. "Is that a wrinkle I see there? I was totally right. The Reds never were all that good at stealing and implementing technology..."
"Does she have a walker? Just kick it out from under her. I bet somebody that old has to use it as a gun stand in order to shoot straight." Sarah turned the corner, headed towards Wade's voice, and what she assumed was Rebecca Barnes. "Don't start the fun part without me!"
The knife went into a pocket as she ducked back out of the way - never pass up a chance to use the enemy's arms against them. They were practically being led by the nose, which made her suspicious. Did they know where she went when the missions were done? Did they know the air and soil and dust of the city would make them sick? No matter, even if the fight went on longer than necessary, this dead city was still her terrain. Home team advantage and the thought made Rikki Barnes stop for a moment.
Just a moment, and she continued, making the glimpses longer. Let them see her, follow her into the dead zone and then she could complete her objective and be done with them.
"No walker," Wade yelled, eyes narrowing as he continued herding their mark forward. He saw Sarah and motioned toward the last spot where he'd seen Rebecca Barnes as he pulled one of his burner cells from his pocket. She moved quick, demonstrating a familiarity with the layout of the land - she wasn't running scared. The scales might be tipping, but at least they weren't uninformed. "Baby," he called, pausing for a moment to scroll through the ringtones he'd downloaded to the mobile device. "Baby, I think I changed my mind." Stepping out into the open, he raised his phone and faced the spot where he figured Miss Barnes would be, the volume turned all the way up, and let Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" blare from the cell's tinny little speakers.
This was not a blasted game, what kind of people were they? She thought that they must have sent madmen after her, madmen or idiots and she didn't think he was an idiot. No idiot would have survived long enough to get into the exclusion zone. Mad,and therefore dangerous. The patriot, the martyr, those could be accounted for. Madmen you just put down like a sick horse.
She stepped out of the shadows, and towards the street, hands in the air. Let them get close, bring the fight to her. They didn't have guns, or explosives, if they had they would have used them by now. She could have picked them off, but for the order to bring the bodies in.
Bracing his hand over his heart, Wade started singing with the song. "All my instincts, they return and the grand facade, so soon will burn, without a noise, without my pride, I reach out from the inside..." At least she'd stopped running. Now they just had to corner her. Or disarm and freaking subdue. He hated those orders. "C'mon, baby - sing with me!" The mercenary moved forward, hyper aware of every move his mark made.
Sarah had to give Wade credit-- he was absolutely insane. She liked that about him, really. She smiled brightly, bone club in hand, and stepped forward on Rebecca's other side. She was going to have to decide who to focus on first. "If you give up now, I can make him stop singing. I think there's duct tape back in the car." Surrender? No.
Reach down and toss a flashbang grenade with her artificial arm? Yes. And then run again, but this time cutting around them, to what had once been a park, just enough to get as far out of the range of the noise and light as she could. It would buy her time to choose when and who she fought and how.
"How you gonna do me like that?" Wade asked, stepping back from the concussive blast and the light, head turned to the side. A few second later, shrugging off the heat from the detonation, he blinked to get his eyes back to normal and moved to intercept, if he could. He was used to these kinds of tactics, though he preferred the scenarios where he had a gun and could just shoot people to this one. "I know I didn't bring you flowers, but jeez." He paused and sat the phone on a window ledge, then silently moved off. The song would end soon and, at that point, he had another he could just sing from memory if he needed to. But first, he was going to try some sneaking. He could always just tackle the woman - guns were only so good, after all, and most of their usefulness was the fact that they were generally ranged weapons. Wade was pretty sure he could take her in hand to hand. Or a knife fight.
Sarah rolled her eyes, and finally after she stopped seeing stars, she called "You know, you're not really doing a fantastic job of proving that you're not all flash. Are you actually going to fight us, or are you going to keep hiding from us?" She moved carefully against the side of a building in the direction she had seen Rikki go in as the flashbomb go off.
It would be a hard fight regardless of who she went after first. The man could heal, the wound where her shot had grazed him had stopped bleeding, or at least it wasn't as bloody as it should have been and he hadn't bandaged it. The woman had the bones, a club made from her own thigh.
Time to slow one of them down. The flashbang hasn't done enough, maybe a demonstration of sheer brute strength would. A concrete park bench, the stone flaking and crumbling but still solid made perfectly serviceable projectile. She ripped it from the rusted brackets holding it to the ground and spun in an arc, throwing the thing out towards her target.
Wade ducked just as the ringtone ended and the cement bench went flying over his head. He glanced at it as it impacted the building behind him, effectively crushing the burner phone, then turned and grinned at Rebecca Barnes. Waggling his eyebrows, he did a little MC Hammer step and sang, "Oh Rikki, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind - hey Rikki!" And then he went on the offensive - as if his singing voice wasn't offensive enough. He'd need a bit of preparation to heft something that'd been bolted to the ground, so he didn't go for the collapsing mailbox - he chucked a throwing knife at the woman's thigh and moved closer. Part of this whole scheme was to tag-team her and get that arm off her. That meant they had to get close enough to tag team her.
He was close enough that she could go for a tackle and aim for the already injured leg. At least the missed shot would be of some use. She ignored the knife, she was fast enough to dodge that, even if she couldn't quite dodge gunfire. The Winter Soldier dropped her shoulder, the metal-encased one, reinforced with the cybernetics that connected her nerves to her artificial arm. The metal socket acted as armor, it would take the worst of the impact from the tackle, even if her target was wearing body armor.
Instead of attempting to deflect the blow, Wade rolled with it. He let his injured leg buckle beneath him and allowed Rebecca's momentum to carry her over him. Continuing that movement, he threw her over his head, toward Sarah's position, and then righted himself, twisting to watch as the women met so he'd know when it was his turn again.
Sarah swung the bone club at Rikki's midsection, hoping it might connect before the woman had a chance to fully stop from her previous charge and ready to jump out of the way if she looked to be changing direction. "Come and get me!"
The Winter Soldier had trained so much that her reactions and reflexes were second nature at this point. So in the time it took her brain to process 'second attacker, weapon', she was already pivoting to block the bone with her artificial arm. The club shattered against the metal, and she continued through, the fingers of her flesh-and-blood hand jabbing toward Sarah's throat.
When Rebecca got close enough to reach her throat, Sarah thrust her bone covered knee towards the other woman's midsection with as much force as she could muster. That big metal arm wouldn't do her a whole lot of good if she was winded.
Take a knee strike to land a throat jab. It was a fair trade-off. The jab hit, and so did Sarah's knee hard into the Winter Soldier's lower ribs, and she staggered back a step. Analysis said her rib might have cracked, the bone armor was harder than she'd expected, and she could feel pain as she tried to breathe.
She'd been in worse fights, the cracked rib would heal, she could fight through the pain. She'd had worse pain, and she spun to approach the man, now that her female opponent was occupied with a bruised windpipe.
Eyes narrowing, Wade used some of his enhanced speed and reflexes to position himself behind his target, arm clamping around her throat as he partially lifted her off the ground. A sleeper hold... might not be effective in this instance, but he was gonna give it a go, at least. And he was going to be very, very mindful of elbows and feet that might attempt to do him some kind of damage. "That wasn't very nice, Rikki." His voice was a low growl. "Poor Sarah needs her windpipe. It's important for things. Like breathing."
It wasn't an elbow - elbow strikes on this man would not get her anywhere, but regardless of healing or speed, everyone had noses. She brought her head back hard and fast, right into Wade's face and repeated it several times until his arm around her throat loosened. Breaking the hold was easier once he was distracted by the headbutting and she could twist his thumb until the muscles gave and she fell to the ground in a crouch.
Wade dodged the worst of the headbutts, though he was going to have to have somebody reset his nose before the bone and cartilage started healing again, otherwise it'd just be a bitch later on. Before she could release his hand, he used his free one to grip her wrist, twisting as he attempted to pull her off-balance. He was waiting for Sarah, sparing the woman the barest of glances before turning his whole attention back toward his target in case she tried to return the favor he'd just given her.
Sarah rushed in then, still breathing rather heavily, and sent a heavy boot into Rikki to help topple her. If they could get her on the ground, perhaps they could get her pinned and get that damned arm off her.
A simple wrist toss wouldn't have been enough to flip her, but the boot in her side caught her at just the exact wrong moment. She swore - in English - a single "Damn!" as she hit the ground and then rolled, coming back up with pistol drawn and firing. She emptied the rest of the clip, firing carelessly.
Most of the bullets were stray, but Sarah wasn't fast enough to dodge the one that came close enough to clip her arm, just below a patch of bone armour. She winced, and snarled at Rikki, hoping to get her attention focused away from Wade. "Lucky bitch."
Considering his proximity to the Winter Soldier when she started firing, Wade wound up with a slug landing solidly in his thigh. Luckily, it was the one she'd grazed earlier, so he was already compensating for it. He grimaced, though, knowing it'd be a bitch and a half later but focusing on the target at hand because Jesus, if they could just get her on the ground for long enough, they might be able to get that arm off - it was just keeping her on the ground that wound up being the issue. Pulling several small throwing knives from various hiding places on his person, Wade waited just long enough for Rikki's attention to flicker toward Sarah before he began tossing them at their mark. If he could just disable her long enough - that was all they really needed to do. Because in the end, it was disable her or let their man in the sniper nest take the shot for them. Which, if you really thought about it, was counter to the whole goddamn operation. And Wade wasn't one to let other people do his jobs for him.
The first knife whipped over the Soldier's shoulder as she ducked and darted to one side. The second and third one were intercepted by her prosthetic arm and ricocheted off. The fourth tore at her uniform jacket and drew a hint of blood from her belly. The fifth one landed square in the meat of her thigh, and she staggered. She hissed, jerked it from her leg, flipped it between her fingers, heedless of the blood on it, and returned it at Wade with interest.
Wade ducked. There was really no other way to describe the rather ungraceful way he avoided that knife. So he ducked and, despite the pain in his leg, he felt some small bit of vindication because at least her leg hurt now, too. "Disarm and subdue," he reminded himself, rolling to the side before pushing himself up and saying, "Y'know, on second thought, I'm not thinking you look so fine, Rikki."
That arm of Rikki's might be cybernetic, Sarah thought, but her legs were still vulnerable, as evidenced by the blood seeping from one of her thighs. She pulled a long club-like bone from her own hip, and swung the weapon at Rikki's knees. "Go down and stay down, bitch!"
There was a small part of her, that had studied to be able to pass as a nurse, so long ago, that knew just how much pain the bone-covered woman must have been in when she pulled that... thing... from her leg. The memory of a quick and intense course of nurse training came up, how to treat gunshot wounds and knife wounds and tie off her own stitches and Rikki Barnes was lost for a second, scrambling to get away from the two people attacking her and the club connected with her leg and she grunted, and blinked twice, and then lunged for Sarah, punching at her face with the cybernetic arm.
Quick as a whip, Wade kicked the knee Sarah had hit hardest from behind to drop Rikki and then put his own knee in the center of her back as he forced her down to the ground. He grabbed both her arms, and pulled them back, wary of the cybernetic one, and then nodded to Sarah. "Knock her out for me, chica?"
Sarah would have used the bone in her hand to knock Rikki out, but there was that pesky order not to kill her. Instead she made a fist and punched the woman hard in the jaw, just below her right ear. "No kill operations are just so unsatisfying."
The Soldier struggled against Wade, trying to buck him off, but without a way to gain purchase with either arm, she had no way to get leverage against his grip. Her head thrashed back and forth, and her toes scrabbled against the concrete, trying to get her knees underneath her. And then Sarah's fist struck her jaw, and it blended with the memory of a Viet Cong rifle butt hitting her in just the same spot before darkness reached up and dragged her down into unconsciousness.
"Nice," Wade said, grinning despite himself. He checked their mark's pulse, then nodded in Sarah's direction and muttered, "You are so, so right about no kill operations." Keeping his knee firmly placed, he pulled a plastic tie from his pocket and secured it around Rikki's wrist after hooking it through her belt loop. Wade tightened the plastic, then pulled Selma from her sheath and cut the sleeve off Rikki's shirt and making short work of the cybernetic arm. Tossing it to Sarah, he hit the comm hooked through his ear and said, "Sexy sniper man, you come pick up lady friend now, Wade only charge five dolla."
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