X-Mas in Milwaukee: The Big Crossover

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

The West Coast Avengers and Secret Squad follow the Professor's orders and turn the tables on their puppeteers.



It was likely a good thing none of the Great Lakes Avengers knew what DARPA stood for. Mind you, most Americans didn't know the term either. In the night, it was an imposing facility, squat and grey, surrounded by a high, razor wire topped fence and regular patrols of non-descript but armed guards. The Professor had been clear. It was a dangerous target, but this building was the nucleus of Leather Boy's illegal drug manufacturing for the entire city. Stop him here, and they could break his hold over the coalition of gangs and low-lifes who followed him, rolling back his hold over the city. It would be their most dangerous mission and, as the Professor assured them, the Great Lakes Avengers finest hour. As they contemplated the building, Mister Immortal's phone buzzed and he thumbed it on.

"Oh, I see you're planning something, Mister Immortal. You and that team of lackwits you call heroes. Don't you understand? I have eyes everywhere, and I can see you." They were used to Leather Boy's calls. The villain liked to torment them while they deployed, but up until now, they had been the victors. "I can see you, Mister Immortal. Dead a hundred times and in the ground where you belong. So this is your last chance. Take your pathetic friends and surrender. Otherwise, my men will tear you to pieces and feed them to the lake fish!"

"We don't back down, Leather Boy. And you should already know that none of us can even spell surrender!" Hollis said defiantly before he clicked off the phone. "Leather Boy knows we're here, team. So we need to move quickly. Doorman, we need to open that gate and get access. Bertha and Flatman will cover you, and Dinah will be watching from the air. I'll take up the rear in case he's got any surprises hidden outside the base."

Closing another tiny door he had opened and was peeking into, which hopefully nobody noticed, Doorman turned around to face the rest of the assembled group, coughing and clearing his through while giving his full attention to Mr. Immortal.

"Of course, Mr. Immortal, consider it done!" He opened up a portal, revealing the gate in question and allowing them to pass through to the other side of it, where they should be able to open it. "For the Great Lakes!" he screamed before plunging through the portal.

The guards were armed with guns - big ones, but already knew she was as good as bulletproof. It'd be no worse than that one time she'd been pelted with paintballs coming out of the girls' locker room in middle school. She cracked her knuckles as she ran - surprisingly quickly for a woman her size. "Keep shooting, weenies. I can take everything you've got and more!" She yelled, and then stopped as the gunfire did. "Aww, are you guys scared of little old me? Guess I'm just too much woman for you to handle!" She blew a kiss, and then charged in, linebacker style with one shoulder down.

Dinah had already taken to the skies, preferring to monitor the situation from above where she could keep an eye on her teammates. They were surprisingly good in this sort of fracas, though it wasn't so much due to their 'diligent practice' or 'incredible skills' as the fact that one was immortal, one was impervious to harm, one could hop out of harm's way at an instant's notice and one was nearly impossible to hit by dint of being one-dimensional. That still didn't keep her from worrying, however, and she kept a sharp eye on the the fray below as she circled overhead.

It didn't take much to make an opening large enough for Flatman to get through; Bertha's full tackle had taken out her target and the next man over in the process. He used that as an in, slipped in and around, the one bullet that did manage to hit him, ricocheting off uselessly. "Round and round you go," he yelled, as the guards spun, trying to keep up with an ever spiraling body.

Once everyone was through, Doorman assisted by quickly opening portals behind the guards, punching them in the back of the head or in the kidneys and then pulling back to close the portal. After doing that several times he spied one guard raising his gun to fire and opened a portal directly above the man's head, jumping through it on his end and tackling the guard as he fell through it. "Haha! Didn't see that coming, did you?"

The guards fell back in confusion, being attacked from all directions at once it seemed. One gave a cry of success as he shot one attacker through the head, only to be pulled off his feet by a swooping figure and tossed in an arc before smashing down into the pavement. He didn't notice the man he'd 'killed' get up a few minutes later, dusting himself off. One by one, they fell back from the engagement,leaving behind weapons in their dash for the security of the building. Unlike before, the Great Lakes Avengers began to pull back, following the orders that the Super Squad leader Patch had given them. He's promised that there was more going on than they realized, and he'd have answers for them.

***

Meanwhile, the X-Men kept to the shadows themselves, on the opposite side of the facility. It didn't take a genius to figure out that if you wanted fast access, the lightly reinenforced rear shipping gate would be easy enough to ram through with a truck, and the landing docks offered the quickest access into the building. They didn't know what they might be after in the building, but DARPA's chemical research occassionally stretched to include any number of military applications - chemical weapons that could have a significant black market value. It was up to the X-Men to make sure that didn't happen.

Kurt's communicator buzzed once; Kane's signal that he and Terry had gotten a trace on the expected call from Leather Boy and that they were moving to follow it. Moments later, the alarms of the facility began to blare as the Great Lakes Avengers attacked the 'drug lab' with gusto. Not far from their own position, the lights of a recommissioned armored car blinked on, and the heavy vehicle pulled out from between a pair of small factories and accelerated towards the gate, smashing it open with the front grill easily. The guards had been pulled around to the other side of the building, and as expected, black clad armed men began to disgorge from the back of the armored car.

Kurt's response was swift and brutal, teleporting straight into the middle of the armed group and laying about them, never staying in the same spot for long enough for any of them to get a fix on where the threat was, or even what it was. His job was to sow confusion, and he could do it very well.

Dori was really surprised. She was sure that most squirrels in the midwest would be fast asleep by now, but there were more than a few of them around and she had managed to round up about thirty of the locals. While Kurt was busy, Dori sent in the squirrels. It was kind of funny, really. No one paid attention to the small things, until the small things attacked with tooth and claw. And getting bit by squirrels hurt.

"Go, my pretties!" Okay, she was totally hamming it up. But she didn't say it loud enough to get over heard or give away where she was, above all the action.

The whole ass-kicking thing put her right back into her comfort zone, even with the outfit. She worked inside her "zone," keeping her bomb flashes away from where Kurt worked and Dori's squirrels. The little guys were heroes, as far as she was concerned. Hurting one, even accidentally, was out of the question. She she relied mostly on her body to deal damage. Because really? Who expected a blonde with a bare midriff to kick you while you were down? Laurie for her part kept to the back of the group, waiting for an opening to use her powers or other non-mutant related abilities, it was always best in this situation to let the more martially inclined of their group soften up their assailants before moving in to 'mop up' any remaining resistance.

The fact that she'd mentally used the words 'assailant' and 'martially inclined' had her wondering if she'd been hanging around with the Great Lakes Avengers just a teeny bit too long already.

This being her first real mission back on the team, Clarice was inclined to let the others go have first crack at everything, but she was also not one to hang back. Her powers were either incredibly offensive or defensive, there was very little middle ground, but she had kept up with kick boxing and krav 'mga while she was away from the team, she was no slouch in the butt-kicking department. Catching Laurie's eye, Clarice took her hand and teleported them both, "Give them the poo whammy!" she suggested as they entered the scuffle together.

Laurie reached out and slapped both her hands against two separate opponents, pheromones spreading from her hands into their pores with the contact, causing their bladders to release before she found herself elsewhere as Clarice ported them out again.

“That has to be the most disgusting way of dealing with people ever,” Laurie muttered to Clarice as they ported again to another set of people.

Scott stood back allowing Kurt to lead the assault on their black clad assailants, he was happy to stand back and provide long range support to his team. Seeing that they had their opponents on the run Scott turned his attention to the armored car. He quickly launched a flurry of optical blasts at it smashing through the windscreen and shattering the axle. Satisfied that the vehicle was disabled he turned back to the unfolding battle, unleashing a blast which took out one of the opponents who was trying to bring his weapon to bear on Scott's team-mates.

Since her own powers made her lethal more often than not in combat, Yvette had chosen to stay close to Dori, ensuring the trainee wasn't jumped. She was perched in a close by tree, invisible in the shadows with her goggles shielding her eye glow. It was a good vantage point to keep an eye on the situation, and to cut off any attempted escape on foot. Literally, even, as she saw two of the black-clad henchmen cut and run in their direction; a well-timed swipe of her sharp, blade-like fingers dropped a heavy tree branch on the pair, trapping them beneath it while some of Dori's squirrel friends sat on their heads and chattered angrily at them.

Kurt had found himself with less targets to focus on, seeing as several of them were now either being swarmed by squirrels or suffering catastrophic bowel failure. He'd taken the chance to stop flitting between them so fast and was now toying with three or four, showing off his acrobatics slightly as he punched and kicked.

Dori glanced over at Yvette, "Should I go down there too?" she asked, after a moment. Because it was kind of unfair to send her new friends in completely on their own and she could do a lot of physical damage in a fight.

"Only if the bad guys come this way," Yvette told her. "Once you are the full team, there will be plenty of time for the fighting and you are not bullet proof." She gave the trainee a grin. "It would be the very bad Christmas present, having the bullet wound."

Hollis came jogging up, not noticing that his costume was covered in gore from the bullet he'd taken between the eyes during the attack. Good spirits hardly described the level of elation he exhibited. His first successful team-up! Maybe this was the start of something more!

"Leather Boy's men have retreated into the building. How is the rest of Super Squad doing?"

The mercenaries the X-Men were fighting were also being routed, but where proving to be tougher opponents than imagined. They had obviously been trained to react to mutant abilities, and as they were attacked, fell into well rehersed patterns to cover each other. It didn't do them much good. The X-Men were equally well trained and far more powerful, and their ranks quickly broke. Several used explosives to make their escape, leaving their fallen comrades behind.

Once again, Scott's communicator beeped; Garrison's signal that their side of the mission had been successful. A quick look gave the X-men the information that they needed before they too fell back into the night and joined the Great Lakes Avengers.

Scott ran an eye over the assembled Great Lakes Avengers. "Glad to see you're unhurt" he said, "But I'm afraid we haven't been entirely honest with you," He looked Hollis in the eyes, "We're not the Super Squad. SHIELD asked us to bring a team out here to find out what was going on with you guys. While we were all at the DARPA facility some of our teammates examined the Professor and Leather Boy and they discovered that Leather Boy doesn't exist. It was all a ploy by the Professor, using you to cover up his own crimes."

"You're shitting us, right?" Bertha asked, between rubbing at her face with a small towel. "All that hard work and training and all those heavy bags I broke pounding them with pictures of Justin Beiber's face taped on and it was a trick? You're SHIELD? The Professor's just some con man?" She looked defeated - and slightly deflated, literally, as the track suit seemed to hang on her like it had grown several sizes, or she had shrunk a few.

"I don't understand. What about the drug labs and the secret hideouts we've been raiding?"

"The Professor," Clarice replied, her air-head attitude gone now, "But I can't really say that punching Justin Beiber's face is ever a bad thing. You guys have good intentions, don't misunderstand. Just...this isn't the best way to do good. There are a lot of other ways for you to help. Just...not as super heroes. If you guys disband, the police won't press charges. That's a damn good deal guys. No charges and a way to keep helping people in a different way? Sounds good to me."

"It is, I guess, but..." Doorman looked utterly devastated at the thought of disbanding. "How else can we help then? What else can we do?" He needed the confines and the structure of the Great Lake Avengers to help him stop - er, reduce, at least - using his powers for other purposes.

"Help others," Yvette piped up immediately. "There are plenty of ways that do not involve being the super hero team. Perhaps you have heard of Red X and the work they did after the San Diego earthquake?" Yvette never lost an opportunity to pimp her favourite organisation. "And there are other groups we can put you in touch with. But the important thing is not to fall into this kind of trap again. Your Professor was using you to steal things - that is not what you were about, yes?"

"She's right. The point of our group wasn't about being superheroes in the first place. It was about helping people with our powers and making Milwaukee a better place. Maybe we lost sight of that with the costumes and the Battle van." Hollis said, his voice growing earnest introspective as he spoke. Almost unconsciously, he took Dinah's hand. "We can focus on helping people directly, and we'll still be a team, because we'll be doing it together. Thank you, strangers. No matter what you say, you'll always be the Super Squad in our hearts." With a smile and Dinah's hand clasped firmly in his, Hollis turned and walked away, the rest of the Great Lakes Avengers in step beside them, away from the X-Men and into an uncertain but hopeful future.