X-Men Mission: Amid These Storms: Caught

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

The soldiers turn out to be hired guns, and not doing what they thought they were hired for.



“Break off!” The call came through and the mercenaries started to fall back, intensifying their fire where they had weapons, or dragging fallen teammates with them. By now, they knew the battle was hopeless, and their only hope in escaping was to make the potential body count too high to be worth chasing them. The X-Men weren’t prepared to let that happen. Kane used Paige as cover for a moment, before dashing off to the flank and coming off to one side, splitting their attentions. Now was the time to slam shut the lid of the trap.

The ricochet of bullets, tink, tink, off of Paige gave her a moment of pause, but only to smile. She did so enjoy that wide eyed look they tended to get, and made a quick dash towards the closest group before they figured out just how easy it was to avoid their brunt force.

Eyes safely covered, Yvette took to the wall, scurrying across it to move behind the fleeing mercenaries, hidden in the shadows. A ricochet pinged off her skin with a dull thud and she gritted her teeth, moving into position to help block the exit.

Laurie headed in the opposite direction, trying to get up higher and out of range of the bullets. Against guns, she had very little protection and getting close enough to use her powers was a bad idea at this stage.

So she’d move up higher and give the others information on what she could see from there.

Once he had assured himself that Jean-Phillipe and the girls were safe Scott turned to chase the fleeing soldiers. He unleashed a series of optical blasts into the middle of the group, forcing the mercenaries to duck for cover as he tried to relieve pressure on his team-mates by the door.

Tabitha slammed an elbow into a particularly pushy soldier. "Stay down!" She growled the order. Her eyes scanned around her, but nobody else seemed inclined to push their luck.

Lorna also moved quickly, taking to flight as it was faster to move, to block the entrance as well. She quickly pulled the guns out of the closest mercenaries hands, hoping that those who were unarmed would find to better to surrender.

A few of the soldiers melted away into the night, but the majority of the team was on the concrete, surrounded by a ring of X-Men. Kane pulled the balaclava from the leader, and a wholly unremarkable face came into view.

“Who are you?”

“Fuck you.” Kane sighed. Always the moment of defiance.

“Look pal, in exactly two minutes, the cops are coming through that door to arrest you all. It’s up to you just how many of you get arrested and how many of you become ‘casualties’ before then. Ten seconds to decide.” It was pure bluster, but they had been taken apart professionally and quickly. There was no reason to think that it might not be easier to disappear them.

“Alright, alright. I’m Dan Walker; I work for Allied Security. This is my team.”

“They aren’t authorized to work on US soil.”

“Look, this is... well, a freelance gig. Got an offer a couple of months ago. Go in first, scope the situation out first, pick up a couple of mutants and deliver them to our contact. Kids go to a government training facility.”

“That’s what you believe?” Kane shook his head. “SHIELD is running this op, Walker. Your men are delivering mutants to a foreign power.” The look of shock was genuine, as was the angry mutter from the men. Allied Security were essentially government licensed mercenaries; tended to do a lot of work for oil companies, mining developers; any American business that needed to operate in unstable areas. Most of the men were ex-military; some even Special Forces.

“It can’t be. Listen to me!” Walker said, urgently. “The one was State department. The other had CIA clearance. They checked out. We vetted them.”

“You got screwed.” Kane stood up. “Big time.”



Meanwhile, Kyle and Sam run down two people who might be the real ones behind things.



The X-Men's trap was working, and while they could still hear gunfire, the comm's emergency signal for an X-Man down was still dark and cold. The SHIELD unit was getting ready to go in, to provide the 'official' presence while the X-Men disappeared. It seems like, for once, a plan had worked perfectly.

Except a new scent fluttered by on the wind; thin and light, from the edge of the area they'd locked down for the combat. It wasn't SHIELD and it wasn't one of the soldiers, but it had that same old tinge, as if direct from a foreign location.

Kyle tapped his comm, and as quietly as possible muttered a "More of the same from before. Same weird smell." He kept back into the shadows and watched, because as far as he could tell, there weren't any entry points, which meant nothing good and a lot of bad possibilities.

"Roger that, I'm on it." Sam headed in Kyle's direction, keeping an eye on the area for anything strange. If need be he could blast down into combat range fairly quickly but if and until that became necessary he was just going to watch as well. He wasn't exactly eager to walk into any traps and it was better to be safe than sorry, scouting out the area beforehand. Looping over the area, Sam tapped his own comm while scanning the ground. "Negative on sighting anything here so far."

"We don't have any reports of perimeter breaches. If there's something out there, it got here before we did." The squad commander said, checking in with his own men. "You sure your nose isn't out of whack?"

"Why does everyone always ask me that?" Kyle grumbled. "My nose is fine, unless you all've been farting Indian food." It wasn't quite the same smell as take-out from the local Indian place, but it had the same sense of 'not from here' that Kyle had associated with food from places he usually couldn't pronounce. "Check more than the perimeter. Teleporters, you know, they don't really breach perimeters."

"Lassie has a point," Brand chimed in with her usual brashness. "Double-check all points, we'll see if we can pinpoint what's setting him off."

Sam changed his trajectory slightly to take in the wider area accordingly, keeping an eye out for anyone nearby in the general area. His eyes caught a pair of people off in the distance ahead of him, prompting him to tap his comm and report in. "Cannonball here, two unknowns at roughly one o'clock from my current heading."

"And Little Suzie fell down the fucking well, I want a fucking treat. One of those bacon strips." Kyle grumbled. He went up the nearest fire escape hand over hand to the roof, using the warehouse buildings as a beeline - that is, wobbly and certainly not as the crow flew- towards the direction Sam had given. "Yo, confirming, they're my unknown scent. The big one's a chick, bee-tee-dubs."

The two figures appeared for a moment, moving quickly but not fleeing. Obviously, they were not aware that their presence had been detected, and were quietly making their way away from the area. It was hard to distinguish them, as both were wearing dark, non-descript jackets and pants.

"They're still in motion, following as close as I can without tippin' them off." Sam wasn't exactly the quietest of fliers and it didn't look like they'd spotted their tail, but once they saw or heard him they might take off. "Hard to make out any detail this far out, I'm going to try to get closer." He pushed it a bit further, trying to get a better look at the pair.

"Don't let them see you - if they are connected to this, we can't afford to lose them." Brand's unspoken 'to a couple of amateurs' was audible in her tone. She was on the move as well, sticking to the shadows as she took a slightly longer route than Kyle's. "Hold back and keep them in sight - we'll cut them off."

"No shit." Kyle grunted. He'd made his way to the rooftops, and was creeping along the shadows trying to stay a building away from the duo. Close enough to see, far enough way that hopefully they wouldn't see him, and most importantly, close enough that he could just jump in if they got an 'go' order to try to take them down.

He really wanted that go order. A fight would go a long way towards letting him get some of his bad mood from Agent Brand's Lassie comment out on someone who deserved it.

The tone was unmistakable alright but Sam wouldn't give her the satisfaction of acknowledging it. Instead he kept he distance, extra wary to ensure the pair didn't pick up on his presence. If need be he was ready to rocket into close quarters on a moment's notice, as a good donnybrook would be more than satisfying in Sam's book too - Brand had a tendency to bring that out in the X-Men, it seemed. "Subjects are still moving in the same direction, no change in course yet."

Once they had reached the edge of the perimeter, the two stopped, and one reached for his cellphone. By now it was obvious to them that their plans had failed.

A flying dive off the roof into someone's face was absolutely a great way to kill their cell phone coverage. Even without a go order, calling out for backup or some kind of air strike, or whatever way they got in, Kyle was still betting on teleporter, stopping that was a fantastic idea. And speaking of air strikes. "Yo, Cannonball, I could use backup."... well, it was the intended message, interrupted and broken up by actually having to pay attention to the guy he was fighting. It was like fighting Garrison, without the enhanced strength, and Kyle couldn't just rely on his enhanced agility. This guy could actually fight.

Sam was already diving down to join the fracas, heading for the other target they'd been tailing. As he got closer to the ground he evened out, aiming to bowl over the other person and take them out of the fight in one fell swoop.

He didn't expect her to turn at the last possible moment, and slam both fists down on his back as he sped past. His blast shield protected him from damage, but the impact altered his course drastically down, and Sam plowed directly into the dirt at high speed.

"I could use some help." The man Kyle faced said, a wicked knife appearing in his hand like magic. His accent was odd, like Phillip Ransom's, only deeper and rougher. He moved carefully, slashing in tight arcs, making it impossible to grab at the arm when extended.

It only took a few cuts for Kyle to realize this guy had him out-trained. He was faster, but it seemed like every trick he'd learned or seen, this guy had down faster, plus a few more Kyle hadn't even seen outside watching tapes of Logan in the Danger Room. It was just easier to let the guy in, eat the slash wounds and let the pain carry over into anger. He was already verging on wanting to make these assholes hurt, they kidnapped -teenagers-, the slices to his arms and sides just made it easier to tear into the guy with an almost animalistic fury. He was bleeding in five or six places profusely before he got in close enough to claw at the man's throat and face.

There was a blast of emerald green energy, striking the woman standing over Sam full in the chest and knocking her into the wall.

"Agent Brand, FBI. You are both under arrest on suspicion of human trafficking." Brand had her gun trained on Kyle's opponent with one hand, the other wreathed in tendrils of green flame. "Hands in the air, or you'll get to decide which hurts more, a bullet or a bio-kinetic energy blast."

Getting up from the unexpected trench he'd plowed through the ground, Sam turned and saw that Brand had dispatched the woman who'd knocked him aside. "Much obliged, Agent." He gave her a stiff nod, then turned to observe the woman Brand had shot and knocked into the wall, just in case she still had some fight left in her.

The woman looked hard at Sam, ready to keep up the fight, but the man shook his head and tossed down his knife. "Right. You win." His accent was odd; South African it seemed. He raised his hands as the SHIELD officers swarmed them both.

Only when both were handcuffed did Brand lower her gun. "You have the right to remain silent," she intoned, a triumphant smile on her face. "Anything you do say can be used against you in a court of law..."