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xp_logsAnyone you can walk away from... Marius, Wanda and Emma have a bumpy end to their flight, Warren and Lorna investigate and they find themselves a guide.
“It’s not,” shouted Emma, above the grindingly loud noises that the stricken helicopter was making, “that this was a bad plan. But it’s definitely got its flaws.” She ducked as the helicopter lurched sideways again, swinging pieces of tethered military equipment around at head height. Everything that wasn’t tethered had long since been flung out through various shattered side panels.
"Such as our imminent deaths?" Marius called from his own deathgrip on his harness. He turned Wanda, who was desperately grappling with the controls. "I know you're a bit preoccupied, but there any chance you can 'luck' us?"
"That's not what I do!" Wanda shouted as she braced herself in an attempt to yank the floundering helicopter to the right. Her shoulders and arms were shaking with the effort and sweat-soaked hair stuck to her forehead. "Chaos manipulation is different than luck powers!" A quick glance told her already what she knew. "I so much as touch her and she's going down in flames!"
Wanda risked a glance over her shoulder at the other two. "But there is a chance that I can -" Her sentence was cut short as the helicopter suddenly dipped in altitude and she spat out blood from her now cut lip. "No choice, I have to set her down - I'll do my bloody best to make sure we walk away from this! Brace yourselves!"
Emma braced, right down to the cellular level, diamond rippling across her features and settling in, even as she clung tightly to her harness and lowered her head to her knees. Even in diamond form, she was happy to live without being smacked in the mouth with a disintegrating helicopter.
Whatever Wanda was doing for them, knowing the ground was coming up at speed with no possible recourse for affecting the outcome was an unpleasant experience. Marius' solution was to squeeze his eyes shut and focus on unknotting his muscles, hoping it would save him from the worst of whiplash. It might have been his imagination, but just as his eyes closed he caught a glimpse of ghostly red lines winding through the craft's interior and its occupants, glowing rapidly flucuating intensity -- and in the centre of it sat Wanda, a pounding heart pushing blood through the arteries.
And then, with spine-jolting impact and the propeller-shearing assistance of at least one tree, the ground made its introductions.
Off in the distance, Lorna saw an helicopter go in the opposite direction of the city and go down. Thinking it odd that it wouldn't try and make it back to the city and instead land itself in the middle of the bush. "Angel, a helicopter just went down...away from the city. Don't you think it strange that they wouldn't try to land at least closer to the city?"
"That definitely is strange," Warren replied, swinging around to look in that direction. "We should go check it out, at least from a distance. If they're avoiding the city, it's likely someone we may want to be in contact with."
Marius couldn't recall the impact itself; presumably it had been so sudden his brain hadn't realized it should be recording yet. However, he was acutely aware that the hum of the propellers was gone, they now appeared to be stationary, and it felt like someone had used his safety harness as a guide for where they were going to aim their two-by-four. He fumbled at the clips, vaguely hoping the popping, settling noises the demolished craft was making were perfectly normal and not some sign of an impending explosion.
"Take it back," he muttered, finally managing to unlatch himself. There were bits of forest in the helicopter with them, which he was sure wasn't right. "Would've preferred a duck."
"Fuck any crash you can walk away from ..." Wanda replied, words slightly slurred as she raised her head from where it had been slumped forward. The effort of flying-but-really-crashing at the same time she'd been manipulating reality around them in order to keep them in one piece had taken its toll on her. Blood not only dripped in a steady stream from her nose and ears but also from a new cut on her forehead. While fairly sure she wasn't badly injured, just mostly stunned, she felt disconnected and disjointed, like someone had stretched a rubber band to the breaking point and let go.
Her hands batted at the harness that kept her in place but something had twisted in the metal and it was proving hard to release.
Emma uncurled herself from the brace position, dropping diamond form for a moment to sweep the immediate area for threats and switching back as soon as she ascertained that there were no hostiles nearby. With a sharp tug, she released her own harness and then leaned through the gap in the seats and tore Wanda’s harness apart with diamond fingers. “Can you walk away from it?” she asked Wanda. “Because we should. Or run even. There’s no immediate threats but with a beacon like this, half the Genoshan army will be here shortly to deal with mopping us up. We have to get out of here.”
Wanda caught herself from pitching forward and started to crawl out from the pilot's chair, using gravity to help her along. "My legs seem fine, you may just need to point the rest of me in the right direction," she said, accepting someone's hand to help pull her out the rest of the way from the front of the helicopter. The head wound was bleeding badly but most of them did - it was something to worry about later, when they put distance between themselves and the crash site.
"Do you think it could be one of ours?" Lorna said as she started to make her way to the where the helicopter landed. Approaching it, she flew down lower but still staying hidden, hoping that it was one of their own. After all that has happened it would be nice to have good news. Coming upon the wreck, Lorna saw familiar face. "Angel they are ours." She couldn't hide the relief in her voice as she came into view for the others to see. "Are you all alright?" She called out, finally landing on the ground.
Marius looked towards the voice, then gave a long, slow blink before looking back at his fellow escapees.
"Er, don't think I hit my head, but . . ." The X-Man jerked a thumb towards the two fliers even as the beat of Warren's wings drew close enough to blow back his hair, "That is Polaris and Angel an' not my life still flashing before my eyes in installments, right?"
"Unless we are sharing a hallucination due to the crash then, yes, I do believe it is." Her words were steadier but not by much as Wanda heaved herself up to the tilted edge of the door way. "Well, you two are a sight for sore eyes, almost-sister," she called out to Lorna and then gave a half wave to Angel. "Warren, care to help a lady to the ground?"
"It would be my pleasure," Warren said with an out of place charming smile, catching Wanda around the waist and helping her to the ground. "Is there a first aid kit in there? That head wound is looking nasty."
“There’s no way of finding it,” said Emma shortly. “Not in a hurry. We need to get out of here. Now!” Her tone was imperative. “There will be hostiles on the way here now and I am not stupid enough to try looking for them until I get away from this great, big twisted wreck of a target that we are standing next to. Move!” Emma pointed a diamond arm at a small gap between forest trees. “Under cover until I can work out if flying out of here will get you killed.”
"Considering the helicopters that may have followed us, I'd rather stay grounded." Warren glanced over to Wanda. "You think you'll be okay?"
The smile she flashed Warren was mean to be reassuring but, considering the blood dribbling over her lips, it proved to be more frightening than anything else. "The further away from the crash site and the city I get, the better I will be," she responded. Emma was right - this was a giant bullseye and they needed to put as much distance between them as they could. "Keep from the roads and off of hills, that will help."
As they headed off in the opposite direction of the city, Wanda quickly tied a makeshift bandage around her head. Better than nothing, really.
"No, we are real and I am really glad to see friendly faces." Lorna said. "I agree with Angel, I rather stay grounded as well. I've seen enough helicopters to last me a two life times." Rubbing her shoulder as she walked.
"Same here," Marius muttered, not really eager to retake to the skies nor inclined to argue with a woman who'd sliced open a man's neck with her bare hand. He followed the others into the brush, wincing now and then as his abdomen communicated its displeasure with a particular motion. Still, he seemed to be doing better than Wanda, and realized with a lurch that Korvus' powers were probably dulling the worst of it.
As the tree cover thickened, Emma finally switched back from diamond form, and sent her mind out in a sweeping arc around them. There were some fairly large pockets of hostile intent making their way in their direction, but all far enough away that they weren't of immediate concern. The way they were heading, deeper into the forest, was clear. Of hostile intent, anyway. Not, however, of minds.
"There's someone ahead of us," said Emma quietly. "He's not Genoshan military." She frowned slightly. "In fact, I'm fairly certain he's not Genoshan. But he's looking for us." She raised an eyebrow. "Or waiting for us."
"The difficulty would be not hearing you. You make enough noise for an army coming through these woods." A small man emerged from the underbrush, using a length of branch as a walking stick. "My woods, incidently."
"Our apologies - crashing a helicopter is not one of the quietest of activities," Wanda responded, though she knew what the man meant. It was one of the reasons they'd been seeking to get as far away from the crash site as possible. "My friend there thinks you might have been looking or waiting for us. Is that true?"
"Not every day you watch a GDF helicoptor fall out of the sky. Or here about weapons fire over the radio at the Citadel. You're mutants, aren't you?"
"Yes." Lorna said to the man. "You have a radio?" She asked. Maybe a radio can give them an idea of what the Genoshans were planning.
"I have a phone. This isn't the Dark Ages." The man said, looking at them. "Jayrash Patal. Nature Guide to the Stars, or at least what accounts for them in Genosha. And if you're mutants, you're either escapees from the Citadel or those dangerous foreign terrorists we've heard so much about on the GBC."
An unexpected wave of dizziness had Wanda closing her eyes for a moment before she spoke to Jayrash. She'd pushed her powers pretty harshly during the crash and the combination of that and the head wound was starting to wear on her. "For someone who's heard a lot about dangerous foreign terrorists -" Lorna had already verified that they were mutants and putting together the different accents to mark them as foreign wouldn't be difficult. "- you do not seem all that alarmed."
"Perhaps it was our subtle entrance and clever disguises," said Marius, his prison-issue jumpsuit showing exceptionally orange against the brush.
"I've been listening to two versions of events for thirty years out here. You either learn to read people beyond their words, or you end up in an unmarked grave or a state prison. I'm not fond of either; nothing to drink, no women." He paused and reached into his pocket for a cigarette, lighting it with a wooden kitchen match that he struck on his thumbnail. "You're definitely not one of the resistance fighters, and your accents sound tourist. So you're either the saddest excuse for an invasion force I've ever seen, or you're on the run."
"Not exactly an invasion force," Warren clarified, doing his best not to bristle at the implied criticism of their group. "We came to rescue our people, who were kidnapped by Genoshans. It seems they may have been expecting us."
"Wouldn't surprise me. The GDF isn't like some Nigerian mob armed with AKs." He took a long drag on the cigarette. "Inside of an hour, this place is going to be crawling with Magistrates. Disappearing into the woods is about the only way to get clear, unless you got an army hidden in your other pocket. Might be worth the risk, if the price was right, to show you how to do just that." Despite the situation she found herself in, Emma almost found herself smiling, amused that it seemed likely that they were about to led to safety by someone who seemed to have modelled himself on Michael Douglas’s character in Romancing The Stone. Without even touching his thoughts to confirm her suspicions, she suddenly and very conspicuously ran her hand through her hair, allowing the sleeve of her stolen shirt to fall back from her wrist and expose her surprisingly still intact diamond-studded Cartier watch to the man’s view.
"Less than an hour? That doesn't give us much time." Lorna whispered. "What do you want in exchange for helping us?" She asked, thinking it might be worth to know.
"Jayrash Patal does not come cheap." He said, considering. "The blonde lady's watch will make a fine down payment, and we can discuss my retainer once we're further away from the crash site."
"Payment isn't an issue," Warren said with a twist of his lips. Even if Charles wasn't forthcoming, between him and Emma it was unlikely they couldn't come to an arrangement.
"Please, lead the way."
“It’s not,” shouted Emma, above the grindingly loud noises that the stricken helicopter was making, “that this was a bad plan. But it’s definitely got its flaws.” She ducked as the helicopter lurched sideways again, swinging pieces of tethered military equipment around at head height. Everything that wasn’t tethered had long since been flung out through various shattered side panels.
"Such as our imminent deaths?" Marius called from his own deathgrip on his harness. He turned Wanda, who was desperately grappling with the controls. "I know you're a bit preoccupied, but there any chance you can 'luck' us?"
"That's not what I do!" Wanda shouted as she braced herself in an attempt to yank the floundering helicopter to the right. Her shoulders and arms were shaking with the effort and sweat-soaked hair stuck to her forehead. "Chaos manipulation is different than luck powers!" A quick glance told her already what she knew. "I so much as touch her and she's going down in flames!"
Wanda risked a glance over her shoulder at the other two. "But there is a chance that I can -" Her sentence was cut short as the helicopter suddenly dipped in altitude and she spat out blood from her now cut lip. "No choice, I have to set her down - I'll do my bloody best to make sure we walk away from this! Brace yourselves!"
Emma braced, right down to the cellular level, diamond rippling across her features and settling in, even as she clung tightly to her harness and lowered her head to her knees. Even in diamond form, she was happy to live without being smacked in the mouth with a disintegrating helicopter.
Whatever Wanda was doing for them, knowing the ground was coming up at speed with no possible recourse for affecting the outcome was an unpleasant experience. Marius' solution was to squeeze his eyes shut and focus on unknotting his muscles, hoping it would save him from the worst of whiplash. It might have been his imagination, but just as his eyes closed he caught a glimpse of ghostly red lines winding through the craft's interior and its occupants, glowing rapidly flucuating intensity -- and in the centre of it sat Wanda, a pounding heart pushing blood through the arteries.
And then, with spine-jolting impact and the propeller-shearing assistance of at least one tree, the ground made its introductions.
Off in the distance, Lorna saw an helicopter go in the opposite direction of the city and go down. Thinking it odd that it wouldn't try and make it back to the city and instead land itself in the middle of the bush. "Angel, a helicopter just went down...away from the city. Don't you think it strange that they wouldn't try to land at least closer to the city?"
"That definitely is strange," Warren replied, swinging around to look in that direction. "We should go check it out, at least from a distance. If they're avoiding the city, it's likely someone we may want to be in contact with."
Marius couldn't recall the impact itself; presumably it had been so sudden his brain hadn't realized it should be recording yet. However, he was acutely aware that the hum of the propellers was gone, they now appeared to be stationary, and it felt like someone had used his safety harness as a guide for where they were going to aim their two-by-four. He fumbled at the clips, vaguely hoping the popping, settling noises the demolished craft was making were perfectly normal and not some sign of an impending explosion.
"Take it back," he muttered, finally managing to unlatch himself. There were bits of forest in the helicopter with them, which he was sure wasn't right. "Would've preferred a duck."
"Fuck any crash you can walk away from ..." Wanda replied, words slightly slurred as she raised her head from where it had been slumped forward. The effort of flying-but-really-crashing at the same time she'd been manipulating reality around them in order to keep them in one piece had taken its toll on her. Blood not only dripped in a steady stream from her nose and ears but also from a new cut on her forehead. While fairly sure she wasn't badly injured, just mostly stunned, she felt disconnected and disjointed, like someone had stretched a rubber band to the breaking point and let go.
Her hands batted at the harness that kept her in place but something had twisted in the metal and it was proving hard to release.
Emma uncurled herself from the brace position, dropping diamond form for a moment to sweep the immediate area for threats and switching back as soon as she ascertained that there were no hostiles nearby. With a sharp tug, she released her own harness and then leaned through the gap in the seats and tore Wanda’s harness apart with diamond fingers. “Can you walk away from it?” she asked Wanda. “Because we should. Or run even. There’s no immediate threats but with a beacon like this, half the Genoshan army will be here shortly to deal with mopping us up. We have to get out of here.”
Wanda caught herself from pitching forward and started to crawl out from the pilot's chair, using gravity to help her along. "My legs seem fine, you may just need to point the rest of me in the right direction," she said, accepting someone's hand to help pull her out the rest of the way from the front of the helicopter. The head wound was bleeding badly but most of them did - it was something to worry about later, when they put distance between themselves and the crash site.
"Do you think it could be one of ours?" Lorna said as she started to make her way to the where the helicopter landed. Approaching it, she flew down lower but still staying hidden, hoping that it was one of their own. After all that has happened it would be nice to have good news. Coming upon the wreck, Lorna saw familiar face. "Angel they are ours." She couldn't hide the relief in her voice as she came into view for the others to see. "Are you all alright?" She called out, finally landing on the ground.
Marius looked towards the voice, then gave a long, slow blink before looking back at his fellow escapees.
"Er, don't think I hit my head, but . . ." The X-Man jerked a thumb towards the two fliers even as the beat of Warren's wings drew close enough to blow back his hair, "That is Polaris and Angel an' not my life still flashing before my eyes in installments, right?"
"Unless we are sharing a hallucination due to the crash then, yes, I do believe it is." Her words were steadier but not by much as Wanda heaved herself up to the tilted edge of the door way. "Well, you two are a sight for sore eyes, almost-sister," she called out to Lorna and then gave a half wave to Angel. "Warren, care to help a lady to the ground?"
"It would be my pleasure," Warren said with an out of place charming smile, catching Wanda around the waist and helping her to the ground. "Is there a first aid kit in there? That head wound is looking nasty."
“There’s no way of finding it,” said Emma shortly. “Not in a hurry. We need to get out of here. Now!” Her tone was imperative. “There will be hostiles on the way here now and I am not stupid enough to try looking for them until I get away from this great, big twisted wreck of a target that we are standing next to. Move!” Emma pointed a diamond arm at a small gap between forest trees. “Under cover until I can work out if flying out of here will get you killed.”
"Considering the helicopters that may have followed us, I'd rather stay grounded." Warren glanced over to Wanda. "You think you'll be okay?"
The smile she flashed Warren was mean to be reassuring but, considering the blood dribbling over her lips, it proved to be more frightening than anything else. "The further away from the crash site and the city I get, the better I will be," she responded. Emma was right - this was a giant bullseye and they needed to put as much distance between them as they could. "Keep from the roads and off of hills, that will help."
As they headed off in the opposite direction of the city, Wanda quickly tied a makeshift bandage around her head. Better than nothing, really.
"No, we are real and I am really glad to see friendly faces." Lorna said. "I agree with Angel, I rather stay grounded as well. I've seen enough helicopters to last me a two life times." Rubbing her shoulder as she walked.
"Same here," Marius muttered, not really eager to retake to the skies nor inclined to argue with a woman who'd sliced open a man's neck with her bare hand. He followed the others into the brush, wincing now and then as his abdomen communicated its displeasure with a particular motion. Still, he seemed to be doing better than Wanda, and realized with a lurch that Korvus' powers were probably dulling the worst of it.
As the tree cover thickened, Emma finally switched back from diamond form, and sent her mind out in a sweeping arc around them. There were some fairly large pockets of hostile intent making their way in their direction, but all far enough away that they weren't of immediate concern. The way they were heading, deeper into the forest, was clear. Of hostile intent, anyway. Not, however, of minds.
"There's someone ahead of us," said Emma quietly. "He's not Genoshan military." She frowned slightly. "In fact, I'm fairly certain he's not Genoshan. But he's looking for us." She raised an eyebrow. "Or waiting for us."
"The difficulty would be not hearing you. You make enough noise for an army coming through these woods." A small man emerged from the underbrush, using a length of branch as a walking stick. "My woods, incidently."
"Our apologies - crashing a helicopter is not one of the quietest of activities," Wanda responded, though she knew what the man meant. It was one of the reasons they'd been seeking to get as far away from the crash site as possible. "My friend there thinks you might have been looking or waiting for us. Is that true?"
"Not every day you watch a GDF helicoptor fall out of the sky. Or here about weapons fire over the radio at the Citadel. You're mutants, aren't you?"
"Yes." Lorna said to the man. "You have a radio?" She asked. Maybe a radio can give them an idea of what the Genoshans were planning.
"I have a phone. This isn't the Dark Ages." The man said, looking at them. "Jayrash Patal. Nature Guide to the Stars, or at least what accounts for them in Genosha. And if you're mutants, you're either escapees from the Citadel or those dangerous foreign terrorists we've heard so much about on the GBC."
An unexpected wave of dizziness had Wanda closing her eyes for a moment before she spoke to Jayrash. She'd pushed her powers pretty harshly during the crash and the combination of that and the head wound was starting to wear on her. "For someone who's heard a lot about dangerous foreign terrorists -" Lorna had already verified that they were mutants and putting together the different accents to mark them as foreign wouldn't be difficult. "- you do not seem all that alarmed."
"Perhaps it was our subtle entrance and clever disguises," said Marius, his prison-issue jumpsuit showing exceptionally orange against the brush.
"I've been listening to two versions of events for thirty years out here. You either learn to read people beyond their words, or you end up in an unmarked grave or a state prison. I'm not fond of either; nothing to drink, no women." He paused and reached into his pocket for a cigarette, lighting it with a wooden kitchen match that he struck on his thumbnail. "You're definitely not one of the resistance fighters, and your accents sound tourist. So you're either the saddest excuse for an invasion force I've ever seen, or you're on the run."
"Not exactly an invasion force," Warren clarified, doing his best not to bristle at the implied criticism of their group. "We came to rescue our people, who were kidnapped by Genoshans. It seems they may have been expecting us."
"Wouldn't surprise me. The GDF isn't like some Nigerian mob armed with AKs." He took a long drag on the cigarette. "Inside of an hour, this place is going to be crawling with Magistrates. Disappearing into the woods is about the only way to get clear, unless you got an army hidden in your other pocket. Might be worth the risk, if the price was right, to show you how to do just that." Despite the situation she found herself in, Emma almost found herself smiling, amused that it seemed likely that they were about to led to safety by someone who seemed to have modelled himself on Michael Douglas’s character in Romancing The Stone. Without even touching his thoughts to confirm her suspicions, she suddenly and very conspicuously ran her hand through her hair, allowing the sleeve of her stolen shirt to fall back from her wrist and expose her surprisingly still intact diamond-studded Cartier watch to the man’s view.
"Less than an hour? That doesn't give us much time." Lorna whispered. "What do you want in exchange for helping us?" She asked, thinking it might be worth to know.
"Jayrash Patal does not come cheap." He said, considering. "The blonde lady's watch will make a fine down payment, and we can discuss my retainer once we're further away from the crash site."
"Payment isn't an issue," Warren said with a twist of his lips. Even if Charles wasn't forthcoming, between him and Emma it was unlikely they couldn't come to an arrangement.
"Please, lead the way."
