Genosha: The End of the Beginning: Power Off, Power On

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As they cut the power, a surprise is waiting for them.



Bishop pried boxes open as Emma pointed, exposing their cluttered,
shiny metal guts. "As long as you're not making this easy." He quipped
about the feedback. He poised the blade of his knife along the wires
of the second junction box, wrapping his left hand in wires from the
main circuit breaker.

He thrust the knife into the wiring while tugging the breaker lines
free with a quick jerk, using himself as a node to overload the
circuit.

With a loud pop and a spray of sparks, the lights went out.

It was overheated silence only lit by hand-held flashlights and
smelling of burned hair for all of half a minute or so while the
quartet worked their way back out the way they came before the lights
came back, on, flooding the hall with amber that washed out all the
colors to yellow and shades of yellow. They broke into a run as the
comms erupted in first exclamations from their other teammates, and
then loud static.

"Oh, that's not good," said Emma suddenly, staggering slightly before
falling back into her usual graceful run. Her right hand tapped at her
temple for a moment and she shook her head. "There's some kind of
psionic damping going on. I can feel you all, but it's like glue in my
brain." She looked over at Bishop. "Which means they were ready for
us. Which means we're going to have to fight our way out of here."
Emma knew that it was stating the obvious, but sometimes that was the
quickest way to break through the disbelief and denial that tended to
accompany plans blowing up in faces.

Tugging both useless comms from his ears, North tossed them aside and
kept pace, guns cocked and ready. His heart was pounding in time with
his feet, powers in overdrive. “Power’s working fine,” he bit out in
between breaths.

“But.” No solution or escape route was forthcoming. They could only
keep running and hope that they made it out of the impending mess in
relatively whole pieces. “Doesn’t look good,” he settled on saying,
echoing Emma’s words and then swearing in German when the first wave
of people came into sight. “Get ready. Going to get messy.”

"Shit." Marie-Ange so rarely swore in any language, much less English
that it would've been a shock, if they hadn't all been at a dead run
someone might have mentioned it. As it was, any chance of a comment on
her unusual word choice was just simply not happening. She hit the
ground, all the better to stay out of the way of North's guns, and
Bishop's power-plant inherited powers and pulled a pair of cards from
her shirt. A wall of brass and brick built itself up behind the group,
and a pack of bristly overlarge dogs with what looked like chitin on
their heads charged towards the approaching group of guards.

"Push through, North on finding an exit." Bishop voiced sternly,
sprinting past the group with ease and up close to the guards. He
kicked the first from a full run as he might kick a door open. The
sickening crunch of his rib cage was louder than anyone could have
expected. The only comfort would be knowing he was likely killed on
impact, making the sight of him flying limply back into the brick wall
at high speed slightly less brutal.

Bishop planted his feet and twisted, a left hook catching the next
guard square in the jaw, battering his arms out of the way
effortlessly. The punch was strong enough to break his neck. Another
dead on contact due the amount of energy the mutant had in reserve.

Recalling maps and floor plans that he had studied the night before,
North picked off armed attackers that were beyond Bishop’s physical
reach. With no time to reload, he reholstered his guns and swiped two
off of the floor and out of limp hands. “Forty feet in front, door on
your right,” he called, barely shifting in time and hissing as a
bullet grazed his arm. He took out the enemy marksman with a bullet to
the eye and glanced down at his watch. “Plenty more outside,
Glühbirne. Head Northwest. Wired fence you can tear down.”

A pause, then addressing the other contact fighter of their group,
“Emma, stick closer to Bishop. I’ll bring up the rear.” No
explanation. “Lots more Scheißerei from where these came.”

"Hardly a surprise," Emma muttered as she swung herself closer to
Bishop. She had gone into diamond form as soon as she'd realized the
extent of the psionic damping, knowing it was going to be followed up
by numbers. Numbers and guns, a combination that negated most of the
advantages of her mutations; firefights forced her into diamond form,
where her skills with offensive telepathy became useless, and numbers
could take her down through force even when they couldn't kill her.
She did appreciate the invulnerability, she had to admit, as a line of
bullets stitched across her stomach, causing harm to nothing but a
poorly tailored and appallingly stitched shirt she had purchased at
the local markets. Adjusting her stance, she made sure she didn't get
in the way of Bishop as they began to move together in the direction
North had indicated.

The imaged dogs had not lasted long, but Marie-Ange's moving wall of
discs survived, rebuilding itself even as it took some of the stray
shots from the guards. In the tight quarters, her larger images simply
would not fit, they would destroy themselves nearly as soon as they
appeared, so she didn't bother, instead keeping the wall regenerating
and moving with them and sending the occasional imaged imp-demon-thing
armed with a nasty looking dagger to slice at the knees and ankles of
guards to slow them.

Bishop continued spearheading the group, sticking to his powers over
his pistol, clearing out the last of the responding officers with a
spray of densely packed electrical tendrils before bursting through
the door and out of the building.

One moment they were a group of four, attacking, defending and
protecting. In the next, their small party was divided in half,
separated by a small sea of gun-toting bastards that had blindsided
them from the right. They had not reacted quickly enough.

North could only spare a split second to watch as Bishop and Emma took
off towards the electrically-wired fence, still charging their way
through the first wave of attackers that had met them outside the
building. “Tarot!” He shouted above the sound of gun fire and bullet
cases hitting the ground, both hands engaged in the familiar pull and
recoil of shooting. Bodies dropped like flies, but there was very
little satisfaction felt. “Three o’clock!”

The precognitive knew, with a clench of his gut, that they were
surrounded and minutes from being overwhelmed. His powers were telling
him what was to come, and that it was inevitable. Without even Emma as
an option for a shield, they were out in the open, vulnerable and with
nowhere to retreat to. There were too many people; too many guns and
too many warnings to react to. When hauling an enemy in front of him
as a shield almost got his teammate killed, he put a label to the
situation – Surrender or die.

A swarm of imps came up over a Magistrate, clawing at his uniform, and
then the exposed skin underneath, but that was only one of many, and
the imaged monsters did not replenish as fast as they were taken down.
The ones that did were misshapen - limbless or out of proportion or
lumpy dripping half-solid pathetic things that barely resembled the
little dreadlocked creatures from Marie-Ange's sketchpad. Unlike
North, she could not see the immediate future, and kept going,
ignoring the flashing lights in her vision that spoke of the onset of
a truly crippling migraine.

There was a moment where she seemed to pause, to assess the number of
guards and that it was just her and North now, and then the
calculating expression on her face slid away to one of panic and fear,
as she scrambled back to avoid a swinging blow from a Magistrate, only
to stumble into another that wrenched her arm behind her back holding
her in place even as she kicked desperately to try to get free.

With Marie-Ange taken, but alive, the fight seemed to leave North when
his last pump of the trigger came up blank. He spun on one heel,
bringing the butt of the emptied gun down on the head of a Magistrate
and kicking the legs out of another. He felt, rather than saw, people
closing in on him from the back, their gunfire having ceased alongside
his, and blindly threw an arm out in token resistance. A booted foot
lashed out, landing a heavy kick on the back of his knee. Searing pain
shot through his leg and he fell forward, stumbling. The useless gun
was wrenched from his hand and a weighted pain at the back of his head
followed. Dark spots clouded his vision and North collapsed,
unconscious. A small mercy that he would appreciate later as his right
index finger was caught and viciously twisted in an act of vengeance,
bone breaking with a loud crack.

Once he tore through the line and out the door, Bishop turned to look
back for a head count. The swarm of Genoshan officers cut off his line
of sight with everyone but Emma. With only a moment of hesitation, he
turned back on path. Without access to her telepathy, the woman with
him might not notice they were about to leave the other two behind.
Hopefully not until they were too far gone to turn back, at least.

Bishop didn't want to leave the pair behind but he was afraid Emma
would refuse to. The rescue attempt would need every person it could
get. They couldn't afford to sacrifice themselves to heroics.

Emma heard, rather than saw, the second wave of troops behind her. The
sheer number between her and the fence and the amount of weaponry they
carried occupied the majority of her attention. She allowed herself a
single moment of calculation, of whether she’d be able to change back
from diamond and try to go on the offensive without being instantly
killed, but even that moment was a luxury she couldn’t afford as the
troops in front of her turned their firepower in her direction. This
wasn’t even a “walk slowly in front of the others as indestructible
human shield” territory, she realized. This was run or die.

With the only advantage left to her being surprise, Emma simply
charged forwards into the hailstorm of bullets. It sounded like death
and thunder and the end of the world coming as her body shed bullets.
Reaching out with one hand and blessing the additional strength her
diamond form loaned her, she yanked hard on the arm of the nearest
soldier, pulling his machine gun past her and turning his body so it
caught the brunt of the bullets. For a single instant, as the nearest
troops realized they had just slaughtered one of their own, the firing
slowed. Emma took the opportunity to sweep her leg outwards, catching
the back of the knee of another guard, buckling him so she could grab
his arm and throw him back in the face of his own comrades. Taking
advantage of the sudden confusion, she turned and ran, covering the
short distance to the electrified as quickly as she could, feeling her
back twitch in anticipation and fear of the troops firing again, an
instinct that could not be over-ridden even by her invulnerability.
With diamond hands, she ripped at chain links, ignoring the sparks
that arced from the broken fence. Fear of capture drove her hands into
frenzied motion, and it was only a matter of moments before she had
opened enough of the fence to slip through.

Emma looked back for Bishop, for Marie-Ange, for North, but there was
only a wall of troops. Abandoning any hope of rescuing any of the
others, Emma fled towards the cover of the nearest building. It was
only when she slipped beyond the corner that Emma dropped out of
diamond form and sent a brutal telepathic blast behind her, scouring
minds with the force of her own terror and guilt, driving the pursuing
troops to their knees, sobbing in pain.

Clothes, thought Emma, looking down at the bullet-shredded rags that
hung from her limbs. Clothes first, to let her blend in, then safety,
then rescue. Or vengeance, she thought, feeling no trace of the minds
of her three companions.

Turning back to diamond, Emma ran.