xp_logs | Genosha: The End of the Beginning: A New Kind of Prison

The X-Men's prison break goes completely wrong.

Out. That was now the only priority. How the power had returned so quickly, how many captives the other groups had managed to free, whether the alarms now blaring were in response to the assault outside or they'd already been discovered -- none of that mattered. They just had to get out. Jim exchanged a tight glance with Jean, his two-colored eyes already beginning to pale towards grey.

"Meggan, stay close to Molly," the telepath said, keeping his voice level over the alarms. This was bad, but there were nine of them, five still with their abilities, and powerless was not helpless. Angelo and Garrison were trained for combat, and even the girls had a grounding in self-defense. They still had a chance.

“I will,” Meggan promised him promptly, loud enough to be heard over the alarms. She hadn’t planned to stray far from the younger girl’s side with everything going on, anyway. Not if she could help it. She understood this clamor wasn’t a sign of anything good, and didn’t want the cavalry to be captured just because they wanted to free everyone.

"They want you two back, they're goin' through the rest of us first", Angelo said quietly to the two girls. "It's gonna be okay."

Molly nodded, staring at the blood on Angelo's neck. She couldn't see it on his hair cause his hair was dark but she could see it on his skin. She wondered what happened. Mr. Kane's face was black and blue and swollen. She eventually covered her ears with her hands because the alarms hurt her ears and looked around, back and forth, hovering near Meggan and Angelo. They took Callie away. She didn't want them to take her away too. No weapons, no cover, and now they could hear the movement. Their captors were coming.

"The Genoshans have mutants. Mutates they call them. Like slaves or something." Kane said quickly, trying to get them to understand. "There's more. One of the Commanders-"

He was cut off as suddenly their section was lit up with floodlights, as bright as a desert noon. Magistrates, fully armed and ready began to pour into the room.

"I hope you don't mind us interrupting this touching reunion," a woman's voice called out. The magistrates surrounded the vermin from both sides. When secured, Betsy Braddock appeared, walking to the group with authority. The magistrates parted as she regarded the criminals. Her amethyst eyes cut through each of them, assessing the quickest way to neutralize the group. "I was eager to meet your friends." Her eyes fell on Garrison with a twisted smile. "Now, you can come with us peacefully or we can be more direct in our approach."

The stance was different, and the hair was shorter. She was in a uniform he had never seen before. But the voice . . . Every muscle in Jim's body locked. Conflicting thoughts crashed through his mind like the debris of a broken dam, that she couldn't be here, she'd been on assignment, she was supposed to be safe -- but all those thoughts yielded only one word."No--"

The team of magistrates opened fire. Rubber bullets: nonlethal, but incredibly painful. They ignored the jump-suited prisoners, focusing instead on the more immediate threat, the still-empowered intruders.

Jean had only a moment to connect A to B, only a glimpse of a face, but the purple hair was unmistakeable. She saw the look in Jim's eyes. And then came the chaos. "Legion!" Jean said as she brought up a telekinetic shield to block herself, as well as Garrison, Angelo, Meggan, and Molly from the barrage of rubber bullets. He was just standing there. ~"Legion snap out of it!"~ Her gaze twisted to Vance. ~Vance. Put up a shield. Now. ~

At the illumination of the floodlights, that pink aura of Vance's TK flared brightly to life, surrounding him as his eyes glowed under the power of his mutation. He moved to spread out and draw away some of the incoming fire, trying to make up for his earlier hesitation. Still shaken up by his unfortunate, and tragic, confrontation earlier, Vance spoke both out loud and in his head at the same time, perhaps a bit louder than he needed to. Then again, considering the chaos and the bullets, his spoken words were probably drowned out immediately. "Got it!" His teeth gritted, Vance's hand whipped up towards the firing Magistrates between his half of the group and Jean's shield, and suddenly a pink wall of force slammed into place between Haller, Vance, Sarah and Paige, deflecting the rubber bullets upward and into the ceiling harmlessly.

Dammit. God fucking dammit! Of COURSE it was Betsy. Sarah vowed never to speak to another soul again, because they always seemed to show up later to try and kill her. She pulled a bone from her shoulder, and gripped it tightly as she approached the limits of Vance's shield. "Come and fucking get us, assholes."

Angelo had set himself firmly between Meggan and Molly and the shield, his expression somewhere between anger, determination and resignation. Whatever happened, he was going to see those two safe.

Even if it wasn’t possible to lose track of the younger girl and there wasn’t much she could do, Meggan flinched and edged closer to Molly anxiously at the first sounds of gunfire. Even if they were helpless, out in the open like this, even behind a shield. Would the soldiers just keep going at it even with the shield in front of them, until there weren’t any bullets left, or someone got tired?

Molly screamed as the bullets struck the shield they were behind and she kept her ears covered with her hands. The bullets didn't hit them but since the shield was invisible she could see the bullets when they hit and dropped to the ground. Her eyes welled up with tears and she tried to breathe better but it was hard to breathe cause she was scared the bullets were going to hit her and people were yelling and she wanted to hide and there was no where to hide.

The sound of gunfire seemed to be coming from under water. The part of Jim's brain that remembered what it was to be shot writhed, but he couldn't seem to move. This close, he could feel the brush of Betsy's mind -- and it was her mind, he was certain, but it was wrong somehow, like a familiar room gutted and remodeled. So changed that, if it had been any other mind but hers, he might never have recognized it at all. And now the anger came, and the telekinesis, too, and his own shield snapped into existence as he began to charge blindly into the magistrates' ranks.

There were too many people in danger, too much on the line. So many sounds, ricochets, emotions. Erupting through them all was one: anger, a burning anger, raw and ragged, both emotionally and psychically. It cut through to Jean even before she saw him take action.

~Jim. I know. I know it's Betsy but you have to stop. There are lives at stake.~ She couldn't move from where she was, lest the bullet fire strike someone. The gunfire was all around them. Jean bared her teeth. She could feel the beginnings of strain. ~Jim. Jim! STOP THIS! ~

The press of her mind hit him like a physical blow, but the younger man barely faltered. He stopped only long enough to slice an arm at a handful of guards trying to obstruct his path to their commander, sending them crashing back into the walls, and in that heartbeat of an opening whirled to face Jean. His eyes locked to hers, and they were both blue, solid blue despite the power that was Jack's, and in that moment a wave of emotion poured down their link and directly into Jean's mind.

All the hairs rose on the back of Jean's neck. She was not expecting to be struck by her own teammate so the psychic blast hit her with almost full force.

Rage. Betsy's laugh turned into a snarl, long hair, short hair, a nagging sense of foreboding, a crush of worry, wrong, tainted, painted over, ripped away, shattered, darkness, fear, pain, the coldness of a tile floor, the smell of vomit and alcohol, a trembling body entwined in another, desperation, purple hair in sunlight, a warm rush of love at the sight of Betsy in a black dress, the twinkle of a knowing smile, unyielding, outreached hands, devotion, determination, certainty.

Jean cried out in pain at the sensory overload, her hands clutching her head as it took every ounce to remain on her feet. Her shield flickered dangerously in and out.

The magistrate's attention was directed elsewhere, her eyes focused behind a clump of fellow magistrates. She said something that was lost in the din of the chaos, then made a single gesture. A telekinetic field slammed into existence, bisecting the single group into two: the prisoners on one side, and the rescuers, with the sole exception of Jean, on the other. Magistrates remained on both sides, but the division of the mutants was too precise to be anything but planned. The magistrates behind Braddock parted, revealing two figures with the slightly unfocused look of mutates. One, an almost cadaverously thin man, stared fixedly at the apparently empty space filled by the telekinetic wall. The other was a round-faced girl, no older than 17.

"No!" Vance yelled as he felt the invisible barrier slam between his and Jean's fields, cutting the group in two. His own pink shield disappeared as he turned towards the two mutates, eyes glowing a bright pink. He stared down the both of them, and a pink tendril of his teke ran along the invisible barrier, tracking back towards the cadaverous-looking mutate. And as the pink tendril of teke got closer and closer to the mutate, it suddenly turned into a wave of raw force, the pink aura expanding as it drove towards the mutate. "You're not going to take them again!" howled from Vance's mouth, and his eyes flared brightly as he lashed out.

The two mutates stared blankly at the escapees then, they abruptly turned back to Magistrate Braddock. Two pairs of deadened eyes regarded their overseer for a moment, leaned in and all three smiled at one another. As if the conversation ended, the mutates stood straight, turned their dark gazes back to the terrorists. Mission relayed, Betsy watched as her mutates moved in unison with the same expression, both linked to her, carrying out her orders, determined to incapacitate them.

As a former mistreated young mutant herself, Sarah had a burning hatred for people who used young mutants as tools. And these people had a pretty shit-tastic track record so far. She looked carefully at the girl, and wondered exactly what her powers were. "Come on then," she shouted, "I'm not going without a fight."

In response, the girl's eyes paled to a shimmering white. She turned blank eyes on Sarah and Paige, then tilted her head slightly. There was the briefest hint of a visual distortion around her. Sarah's world turned on its ear. The direction her body identified as Down abruptly repositioned itself by 90 degrees, then slid again. And kept sliding. Sarah stumbled backward, but despite the world around her refusing to stay still, she could still see the Magistrates coming into take her down. The world continued to tumble, and she was reminded of vultures swooping in from all angles for the kill. Well fuck that. She grabbed another bone, this time from her thigh, and gripped one tightly in each hand. Forcing herself up off of the floor, she swung hard in their direction, trying to anticipate where the Magistrates actually were and not where her eyes told her they were.

The telekinetic's unsettlingly calm gaze had fixed on Vance. The mutate's eyes showed nothing but a hundred-yard stare -- and suddenly, without signal or warning, Vance's hammerblow crashed into an invisible steel wall. The pressure against his shield wavered for an instant, as if testing the resistance -- and exploded outwards. That hundred yard stare met a pair of grimly determined brown eyes staring right back.

Vance's world seemed to shrink from the chaos around him to just that pair of eyes sunken in the cadaverous face. And his mind reacted faster than his own body. As the pressure of the invisible shield expanded outward in an explosion of force, Vance rocked back on his feet, taking a step backwards as his teeth gritted tightly. His hammerblow shattered, Vance lashed out with a pair of attacks; the first tendril of pink TK charged directly at the mutate, even as the second looped around in an attempt to take the mutate by surprise with a two-pronged attack. His concentration so focused on the mutate at the other end of the teke, Vance didn't notice the little rivulet of blood that started to leak from his left nostril.

The battle had begun and the smell of blood made her smile. The escapees and their rescuers were already losing and she felt victorious. There was something demented in that but it was the truth. Betsy let herself feel the searing pain as the rubber pellets connected, indulging in the forced out groans, and the hard thud of falling bodies. The heat of battle made her feel alive. Awake. She watched on as her mutates took joy in their work. Satisfied, she smiled. So very pleased.

JIM! A voice called out over the astral plane. Her moment of reflection broken by the cry and the approach of a man, heading straight for her. What caught her eye was the entirely deranged look on his face, the look of utter desperation. She could tell he was a telepath by his psychic presence but what caught her attention was the feel of his mind. It was like a jagged landscape, assembled and disassembled so many times, it was almost too painful to approach. The idea of forcing her way through that patchwork mind, while it ripped at her mental shields with the slick like edges of his thoughts. Betsy inhaled. The very idea of it made her skin tingle.

"Oh, goody."

She moved differently. That was the first thing he noticed. Still smooth and efficient, but it was a military efficiency, brisker, less fluid. As if someone else was wearing her skin. He drew to a stop a few feet from her, and for an instant eddies of telekinesis tugged at their clothing like a retreating wave. Then the last of Jack fell away, and there was only Jim.

"Betsy," he said, his voice urgent but making sure he kept out of arms' reach. He searched her eyes, hunting for some flicker of recognition. Mind-to-mind, perhaps he could match her, but the thought of an assault on her made him sick. He had to find some thread to pull, some memory to trigger. "Betsy, do you know me?"

She had listened in on the exchange between the redhead and the man in front of her. Grinned as he lashed out, sharing imagined flashes of him and Betsy together. Delusional. Her fingers itched, she wanted to crack open his mind, slice him open with her knife. Craving it, she let the eagerness shine through. She exhaled with a soft, familiar smile. Her voice familiar like old lovers, reconnecting. "Of course, Jim."

For just an instant his heart leapt with relief. She'd called him by that name, a name the Genoshans couldn't have found in any file, and the warmth in her voice moved his feet toward her of their own accord. His mind opened automatically in greeting and relief, and just as they were close enough to touch he realize that the cold, alien thoughts behind those familiar eyes hadn't flickered once-- Betsy had her hand on his chest when the realization hit. But it was already too late, her right fist was already jammed into his skull. A bright purple hue surrounding the pair, Jim's eyes matching the light from her psiknife.

"You should've listened to your friend." She said, as her psiknife ripped through every part of him, all parts of him, and smiled as one by one, Legion went dark.

Withdrawing her fist, she pushed Haller away. He collapsed to the ground. Barely affording a thought, she walked over him and stopped, then shivered. "That was quite exquisite." Betsy eyed two magistrates. "Take him, I may want to interrogate him further."

Some distance away one of the telekinetic's eyes twitched; while force seemed to come easily, the strain of maintaining the dividing barrier and parrying from multiple angles seemed to be giving the mutate trouble. He deflected the second loop, but his frontal protection wavered. For an instant the implacable expression flickered into something like anxiety, and the pressure on Vance redoubled.

Vance ground his teeth together as his blows were held off by the mutate, and he pulled his teke back for another assault. However, as he felt the pressure from the mutate redouble, he quickly pushed both of his hands up and forward at his opponent, a pink wall of his own TK slamming into the pressure from the mutate. The small dribble that had started from his left nostril had become a steady stream from both of his nostrils now as he held up against the force of the pressure, trying to snap it as well and shatter the mutate’s concentration. Before he could shatter the mutate’s force shield, however, Vance turned as he heard a noise just off to his right side. Too late, Vance could not raise his shield in time as the butt of a rifle slammed into his right cheek. Fortunately for him, the cheekbone didn’t shatter with the impact, but Vance’s head snapped around, the pink aura of his telekinesis disappearing in the instant where he is rendered unconscious, dropping to the floor like a sack of potatoes. *THUD*

Despite their numbers, the magistrates were having difficulty subduing Sarah. Someone yelled not to close on her, but it was too late; one man was already falling back, clutching at his collarbone where a strike had just barely missed his jugular. Another took a slash to the thigh and had to be dragged away by a comrade before another one of her wild flails could find him again. Her daggers connected at least five more times before someone screamed "Taser!", and suddenly she found no one within her reach. Well if that wasn't just rubbing salt in the goddamn wound.

Sarah's muscles locked with the influx of electricity, and she collapsed to the floor in a heap, hands bleeding as the shock forced her to grip the bones in her hands even tighter. Breathing heavily, she tried to regroup, but the room was still spinning and her body screamed with all the abuse it had taken.

"Ready restraints," ordered a voice somewhere above her. A blurry form moved towards the fallen girl, just out of the reach of her arms. Far behind him, protected by a knot of magistrates, the young mutate lowered her chin a fraction. Sarah was hit with a surge of vertigo so intense her internal organs felt as if they'd spun around inside her own body.

"Slide away your weapons, and put your hands behind your back." It was the magistrate speaking now. "This is the only time I will ask."

The only good thing about being beaten to the ground is that when they think they have beaten you, they will stand next to you. Sometimes they are even stupid enough to hunch down. And even with the room spinning, hunching next to a desperate individual is a horrible idea. Sarah tossed the bones in her hand to either side, blood splattering across the floor. Two magistrates approached on either side, and using the last of her energy, Sarah twisted up and used a bony elbow to crush the closer magistrate's nose. She knew there were too many of them, but still she laughed hoarsely and smiled around the room. "I told you I wasn't going without a fight."

A pair of booted heels approached. Betsy spoke, "Finish it."

This time the magistrates took her at her word. Seemingly out of nowhere the butt of a rifle slammed against the back of Sarah's head, and while she reeled a hand holding a baton swung to take her across the face. A boot took her in the side of the ribs, then another, and another, and now she was flat on the ground and before she could reach for another bone someone stomped on her hand with bone-grinding force. The outcome was inevitable, but now they knew what they were dealing with. Their comrades were wounded, some maimed, and she had been given her chance. And so even when Sarah finally stopped moving the beating continued on for a few moments more, just in case.

"There's still one more left. Break it." Magistrate Braddock spoke as she set her team on the last remaining X-Man. "Break it all to pieces."

Paige cried out something intelligible, able to see Sarah through two walls of magistrates, but unable to get through. Each desperate punch left her metal husk sharper and more desperate until the last one went down to a set of claws ripping out his throat, dropped gurgling onto the floor with a wet noise. Her eyes shifted from her still friend and moved to Betsy, keeping the circling girl in the corner of her eye. "I never did like you. Ooh! I have an accent and purple hair, look at me, I'm so mysterious with my obvious wounded bird syndrome and sassy comebacks! Let's get this over with."

Angelo had watched all this in mounting horror from the other side of the invisible wall. His arms were wrapped firmly around a sobbing Molly, now, with her face buried in his side as he tried to protect her even from seeing what was happening.

"They're not real bullets, chiquita", was all the reassurance he could offer. "See, nobody's dead." He hoped, although some of his fallen friends weren't looking good.

The little purple cat slipped down from the top level of the prison section of the citadel to a second sub-basement, following the sounds of fighting. She used her claws to take the cover off an air vent and saw the chaos below, shifting into her girlform but staying inside the vent and just leaning her head down. This way she could talk, but she could still make a quick escape if necessary. Except there didn't seem to be any fighting where the vent had opened... how odd! It took a moment before she realized that there was some sort of shield around the area, and that she had popped up in the middle of it. "Nightcrawler's team is in a lot of trouble," she announced to whoever was in a position to be able to listen, even though it looked as if this team was in pretty dire straits as well. "They need help. What should I do?"

The bullets were relentless, pounding against Jean's shield. She had managed to get it back up but it was all she could do to keep it up. On the other side of a insurmountable invisible wall her team lay fallen, beaten. Pain radiated from their minds and their bodies with each blow of a bullet, a foot, a fist, a baton, searing, pushing on all sides. If she hadn't felt Catseye's presence before hand she might've blasted her back. The status of their own battle was written all over her face, her skin glistening from sweat in the light as looked over at Sharon, her gaze distant, yet determined, teeth still clenched, breathing labored. The voice in Sharon's head was clear, firm, with a touch of desperation. She tried to keep her mental shield thick as well, since Betsy was there, in hopes she wouldn't hear her orders.

~Run. Take the girls. As far away as you can. Go through the ducts.~ If there was a chance. They were young, unhurt, small, quick, fast. It was the only chance they might've had. She couldn't let them take them all. Not all of them.

Catseye flinched at the voice in her head and tried not to let panic swamp her as she heard Jean's orders. She wanted to stay and help! It wasn't supposed to be like this- Jean's team was supposed to come help Kurt and Kyle and Dori and Clarice! She wasn't supposed to be running away! But an order was an order, and Catseye knew Jean was right to be concerned about Molly and Meggan. ~Okay, I will. I'll look after them, I promise. We'll get to a meeting point and get more help. Then I'll come back!~ "Skin, can you boost them up here to me?" she asked Angelo, leaning farther out of the vent, bracing with her legs and reaching out with her arms.

He was already moving before she'd finished the sentence, lifting Molly up into Catseye's arms to be pulled into the vent, then turning back for Meggan.

"Megs, here, put your foot in my hands..."

Meggan nodded without hesitation, knowing this wasn’t a situation where she should do anything but obey. They had to get out of here. Once she had the right leverage from Angelo’s aid, she was able to reach the opening. She stretched out her hand for Catseye to take, so that she could drag herself through the rest of the way.

Now that both girls were in the vent, Catseye shifted into her cat form and started out at a trot, leaving Meggan and Molly to crawl behind. She didn't know quite exactly where to lead the girls, but heading away from the fighting seemed like a pretty good start.

Behind them, the last of the coordinated resistance fell as Paige tossed two Magistrates aside like rag dolls, only to crumple as Betsy's psychic knife took her from behind.

Kane grabbed Angelo by the back of the jumpsuit, and pulled him to one side as more weapons fire traced around them. Ducking, they moved into the cover of a corridor, but that wouldn't last long.

"We're cut off." Kane said, ducking as more rounds skipped off the concrete. "Jean, we're cut off! We've got to retreat."

"I know!" Jean said as she allowed herself a glimpse at the unconscious bodies of her team on the floor on the other side of Betsy and the magistrates before ripping her gaze away. Drawing in a breathe, she eventually around the corner of and stared up at the wall of men and their purple haired leader as her features suddenly became unreadable. Dangerously unreadable. Her body stood rigid, hands down at her sides. A tendril of sweat that had started to drip down her face seemed to stop and hang in midair, her red hair catching in the light like a halo of fire.

The look in her eyes lingered for only a split second. Then she cocked her head to the side and a telekinetic blast radiated outward in front of her like a shockwave, a tidal wave meant to force backward anything in its path a few good yards. And, for those closest to her, it'd probably send them into la la land for awhile. All of the lightbulbs in the hallway exploded, sending a shower of sparks raining down before turning the hall pitch black. The cadre of guards crumpled and flew backward like a house of cards with a chorus of thuds, thwacks, and grunts.

Jean turned to Garrison and Angelo.

"Let's move."

She had spotted a door leading to another hallway earlier. Hopefully the 'distraction' could buy them some time.