xp_logs | Genosha: The Unrelenting Struggle: Derailed (Reply)

During the trip to Prenova, Ororo and Jubilee secretly start to work on their restraints.

Their fellow captive Liam had decided to make the most of the trip, happily telling them stories about Genosha and his life there as a mutant. He reasoned darkly that once they got finished with him, his story telling days would be over, and he was happy to answer questions. A mutant with an odd ability to smell metals like a bloodhound on a scent, Liam had been a valuable member of Genosha's mineral exploration teams. Always with a touch of irreverence in him, he had a tendency to disappear on benders, twice having to be flown back from the mainland. Before, it had been treated like an annoying and expensive prank. However, a few years ago, once the first mutates appeared, there was less tolerance for such actions. For the first time, Magistrates stopped talking to mutants with respect, and instead issued orders. Dissent was met with violence, and those who refused to fall in line ended up disappearing. That's when the push started for the power plant, and the body count began to climb as they were worked like slaves instead of people. Liam decided he'd had enough, and tried to disappear with the help of some foreign friends in the mining industry. Their boat was stopped just off the island, the friends executed with a bullet to the back of the head and dumped into the water, and Liam brought back in chains.

Genosha had had enough of any part of him other than his powers.

Jubilee listened to the man's story with only half an ear, her thoughts on the paperclip she'd managed to lift from a clipboard as the guards had fitted her into her mutate suit. She'd broken it apart as they processed her, and imbedded the smaller parts under the skin of her palms, and she now worked them out slowly with her nails, not wanting to drop them and make all her work mean nothing.

It had taken all Ororo's skill to gain the pen - her clumsy stumble had gained her several new bruises and her wrists still ached where the Magistrate had wrenched her back into her place. She had waited, as tense as a coiled spring, for someone to notice the missing implement, for the searching and the slaps and the punishment to follow - but it hadn't. Somehow she had made it onto the train with the pen still secreted away and as she noticed Jubilee working away at her palms she wasted no time in retrieving the pen and carefully, subtly starting on the locking mechanism of her handcuffs.

Kyle had remained strangely quiet for most of the train ride, a vast difference from his usual brash, talkative self. He'd given the guards a few growls, and stared at them with narrowed eyes whenever they walked past, but otherwise had remained silent. Until he'd seen Jubilee fussing with her palms - his attention had diverted to the tiny Asian girl until he figured out just what the hell she was doing, and then he seemed to snap back to normal, or what passed for normal. Now the guards' attentions were responded to, with raised middle fingers and snapping snarls, punctuated by "Fuck you, fuck your mom, fuck your 'just following orders' bullshit."

Not so different than when he'd been brought in, really, just now with a purpose.

Startled, North’s eyes snapped from Liam to Kyle, staring at the younger man and wondering if he had decided to toss his sanity out with his life. Genuine worry creased his forehead as he looked towards the metal separating them from the guards, ready to tell Kyle to shut up again. Most of their monthly quotas for witnessing unnecessary death and brutality had definitely been met in excess.

Then, as he had for most of the journey, North glanced at his teammates to reassure himself of their continued existence. Facial muscles relaxed into impassiveness. “What else can they do, really?” He commented mildly, a quirk to his brow. He was not sure how wise it was, but North was uncharacteristically determined that Kyle would not be the only target for wrath this time around. And their voices should be enough to cover any sound from his colleagues’ painstaking work. It was the least – or only thing – he could do. “They lack the brain capacity to do otherwise.”

Kurt was frowning, looking between the older man and the younger - and then he glanced quickly and unobtrusively around at the others. His eyes lingered no longer or shorter on Ororo or Jubilee than anyone else, before he focused on the guards. "Of course not", he chimed in scornfully. "You cannot think Moreau would hire anyone for this job who might have the intelligence to ask questions."

Having spent this train ride in discomfort so far with his hands shackled and locked to his feet, tried to pull his own mind out of his own memories of being a prisoner once before by listening to Liam and the evolution of Genosha. Unfortunately, it didn't paint any better picture of what was ahead for the lot of them. Even so, Vance listened with resolute attention as he committed the stories to mind for future reference.

His attention was so much on Liam, it startled him when Kyle suddenly snapped, and the ex-con jerked his head around to look at Kyle in startlement first, then at the others as they started to contribute to the abuse, one by one. He looked over to the guards to watch them for a moment, and then back to Liam. "How many people would you guess have disappeared? Did you know anyone?" he asked with some sympathy, trying to maintain the continual chatter that would keep the guards bored and not paying attention.

Angel looked between Kyle, Kurt, and North, blinking a couple of times. Had they lost their minds? She swept her eyes among her teammates - and she caught a quick glimpse of what Ororo and Jubilee were doing - before focusing back on the guards. "Hey come on guys, give them a little bit of credit," she piped up, a wry smile pulling at her lips. "I mean, they have to have some kind of brain capacity, they can manage to stand and talk at the same time. That takes talent, you know."

Cammie wasn't entirely sure what was going on, she wasn't paying much attention to things that weren't herself at the moment, but the din of voices did get through to her and she joined in, because right now she'd take any excuse to insult someone even if it ended up getting her another punch to the face.

"They're still a fucking bunch of fucking cowards who hit like little fucking girls."

"And it's not like they can even do that unless they all gang up on one," Adrienne added in a casual tone, getting into the spirit of things. "They could never take on a girl in a fair fight. Too fucking pathetic."

While the others were hurling insults at the guards and generally being a nuisance, Layla was quiet. Her eyes were fixed on the passing landscape out the window. She hadn't been able to to think about anything but that little girl. Rachel. Someone had called her Rachel. It was half blur and half painfully sharp and vivid. The crying and the screaming...and the disintegrating to nothing. The girl frowned, putting the cacophony of her companions out of her awareness as much as possible. Somehow she just could not shake the oppressive guilt of getting some innocent kid killed. Not exactly surprising, was it?

"Well, we did say some credit. Not a lot of credit." Paige smiled a little, looking up at the nearby guard. "Maybe they pick them for looks. Hey? Why don't you take off this goggles and let us take a look?"

The restraints came loose and it was only thanks to some heretofore absent measure of luck that Ororo managed to catch them before they fell to the floor with a clank. She ignored the cajoling of her fellow inmates, grateful that they had done such an admirable job of distracting the guards, but knew that shackled they could do little else to help. It was down to her and Jubilee.

Jubilee had managed to unhook herself from her own shackles and was now keeping a careful eye on their guards for her break. As soon as one of the guards moved away, she shuffled slightly to the side and started working on Kyle's shackles.

Kyle's insults stopped as soon as he saw Jubilee get a hand free, and he made frantic eye movements at the others, trying silently to say "Get them looking anywhere but at me!" with nothing more than eye movements and head jerks. He caught his loosened restraints with his feet and bent over, as though he was holding his head in his hands to keep his arms in shadow.

Vaguely hearing something, Layla glanced up from the window she was dedicatedly staring out. Kyle was...doing something weird. She frowned, looking at him like he had three heads or something. When he caught her looking at him so oddly there was a downward motion of his gaze that hers followed and...what was he doing? Something was up. Layla had zero idea what was up but something was going on here. So maybe him being all weird with the eyes going everywhere was Kyle so failing at trying to be inconspicuous. So, queen of tact, Layla leaned forward in her seat from the other side of the train's aisle and yelled, "Hey, mister guard dude! Have you ever had a tube up your ass? It's really not comfortable. Will my ass get de-tubed when we get there? This is just, like, a transport thing, right? Keep the miscreants from being all 'dude, I need to pee' and shit, right? Because this shit is so not on. Seriously, is anal like really big here and they think people will like get off on it like non-stop butt sex for them? Is that supposed to be a reward around here?"

"Oh great, we're on a train with people who shove plugs up the asses of little kids," Cammie said, very loudly. It was one thing to do it to the adults and another thing to do it to the kids, "Real fucking classy. I mean, if you were fucking going for pedophilia you really took the take there. Why not come over here so I can kick your fucking asses. Or afraid I'll bite off your ears? Not that any of you will be any fucking challenge!"

Liam shook his head. "Won't work." He said, raising his voice. "That's old Bill Tinker guarding us. Bill isn't going to rise to the bait." He shifted his body to help block the sight of Ororo and Jubilee working on the restraints. "Isn't that right, Bill?"

"Shut up, O'Shea. And tell that lot to stop bleating. I'm not going to suddenly get so angry that I'm going to unlock the gate and try to shut them up." He said, and went back to his newspaper. "So unless you've got anything useful to add about the results of the third race in the quinella Friday, put a cork in it."

"I'm surprised you guys know your days of the week," Adrienne pointed out cheerfully. She could see the armoured bunker on the horizon now- they'd be there soon. Luckily, Ororo and Jubilee were moving onto the last pair of restraints. "You guys must have learned them from that Rebecca Black song, huh? Good for you. It seems just your style." To emphasize, she started singing loudly, hoping to draw their attention to herself and away from the two women.

It was a shame, Ororo thought as she frantically tried to unlock the last set of restraints. Finally, her hands were free and yet she couldn't plug her fingers in her ears to block out that song. Here she was stuck on a train, surrounded by armed guards and approaching a fate no better than slavery and it was Adrienne's warbling that threatened to push the last of her sanity over a cliff. Life was truly unf—

A surprise changes the time table on the way to Prenova.

The explosion was completely unexpected. Their trip towards Prenova was drawing to a close. Liam had made it before, and judging by the light, the train was near. While Ororo and Jubilee had slowly worked their way through the shackles of the prisoners, they remained trapped behind the steel mesh, unarmed and feigning to still be bound. There was a slim chance that a surprise resistance once they opened the cage might free them. Instead, the boom flattened them to their seats, and then sent them flying as the train car heeled up on one side and flipped.

It landed awkwardly, metal tearing and bending with the impact. They were jolted painfully into the walls and each other, trying to find purchase as the car slammed down. The impact tore the mesh, and the guard screamed as the metal slashed open his face, leaving him on his knees, blood streaming between his fingers as he clutched the ruins of his eyes and nose. The rear bulkhead had partially come free, and the mesh wall completely, opening up the way to the far door. Outside, the sounds of weapons fire was punctuated by odder sounds, like the impact of energy and the whoosh of flames. It sounded like a Danger Room session, oddly enough.

One moment, the next move was to rush the Magistrates when they opened the train doors to let the lot of them out at Prenova. The next minute, Vance found his world flipped upside down, a thundering storm of darkness and light where down became up and left became right, this world finally torn asunder with the tearing and rending of metal, accompanied by the screams of the wounded guard and the sound of weapons being fired as the train car came to a final, broken halt.

For a moment, it was all Vance could do to open his one good eye and let the ringing clear from his ears, and his sense of balance reassert itself before he picked himself gingerly up from the top of the car where he had finally landed after making a trip around the rest of the car. "Everyone okay?" he said over the screaming of the injured guard, his one good eye looking over the rest of the jumbled car. "78, you still with us?"

An arm came up in response to the question, the slender hand at its end waving from between seats where Layla laid in a heap. "Ow. Yeah, 83, I'm...okay." Her voice came with the obvious strain of not giving into the various pains and aches that being thrown around the inside of a train car had instilled. The scrawny blond girl crawled rather than standing up, seeing it as the easier option. She picked her way around hanging shackles and slithered under the tops of seats until she found Vance. She gave him a weak but genuine smile from where her head poked out from under yet another seat hanging from above. "Yeah, I'm good. Everyone else is good, right?" Obviously she wasn't counting the screaming guard, he could burn for all she cared. A glance around showed her moving bodies, some standing, some in the process and some gingerly just beginning to get up. Layla followed suit, wriggling out into the aisle so she could get up herself.

Kurt had similarly gone flying, but was picking himself up now with a grimace of pain as the leg that had never been quite right since the car 'accident' buckled slightly under him. "Everyone seems to be alive, so can I suggest we get out of here?"

"Careful," Ororo cautioned, wincing as she extracted herself from her seat. "The enemies of our enemies are not necessarily our friends - we must proceed with caution. Kyle," she said to the young man, who seemed relatively unharmed and nearest the now-open path to the door. "What can you see?"

"Not a lot." Kyle admitted. "But, uh, and this is weird because hey..." He raised one now-free hand, to show the scrapes that still hadn't healed. "I can smell smoke. Kinda hoping you guys can too or else my healing factor's just like, fuck you, buddy." He untucked himself from the roll that had been more automatic than any conscious attempt to avoid injury and picked his way closer to the one of the torn off gates, carefully avoiding not stepping on anyone he cared about, and carefully making sure to step on the chest of one of the guards who'd been knocked out. Dude was still breathing, that's all Kyle gave a crap about. "Fire. Time to get the fuck out of here."

"I vote fire trumps caution in this case. Let's move! Everyone grab a buddy and find your nearest exit. No shoving..." Paige answered, untangling herself from a mostly still dazed Jubilee and getting to her feet, hauling the other girl up right after.
Angel blinked, rather owlishly, as she tried to reorient herself. The smell of smoke reached her nose, and she grimaced. What a seriously inconvenient time to not have her powers. She stumbled up, tripping over someone's legs - a quick check told her it was an unconscious guard. No love lost - and looking around hurriedly - both for an exit, and for anyone that might need help.

Adrienne found herself snorting in amusement at Paige's comment about grabbing a buddy as she got shakily to her feet and brushed herself off. She looked around for Layla, the only one of her students here and thus the person she felt the greatest responsibility towards. "Damn, where are you, Zombie Roadkill?" she muttered under her breath, then let out a pleased noise when she saw the girl standing in the aisle. "You okay, Ninja?" she then asked North, who was the closest to her. "Need a buddy?"

“I’m good, Naked Lady,” North grunted, straightening from where he had been bent over an unconscious guard. He shot Adrienne a semi-smug look as he gestured with the gun he had purloined from his ex-jailor. A couple more bruises would colour his skin from the unexpected crash, but even those would be an improvement from his current outfit. “Get the little necromancer,” he nodded at Layla, and then at Angel. “I’ll grab the redhead. Follow Ororo out the side.”

"I do not want to know why der Fremde is calling you Naked Lady," Layla muttered when her teacher grabbed her to be her buddy. The blonde carefully moved around a seat that was hanging, wrenched partially free of the floor in the crash, and headed for what she was pretty sure was the exit behind Angel and the German. She really hoped the train didn't explode before they got out or something.

Layla hesitated at the unconscious form of a guard just on the other side of the misshapen metal grating. She was tempted to kick him but then realized he had blood staining his shirt and his chest wasn't moving. She glared at the body and spotted a short, metal cylinder tucked into a spot on his belt. Recognizing what it was, Layla relieved him of the asp before stepping over him and following Angel outside. Maybe she couldn't use a gun but she could sure as hell beat someone with a metal stick.

Cammie didn't do the buddy system, but that didn't stop her from moving to get the hell off the train. The explosion had rattled her, but it wasn't so bad. There were worse things in life than an exploding train, after all. She almost stumbled before finding her footing and making her way towards where everyone else seemed to be heading buddy-free.

Jubilee had followed Paige out of the train, patting the other girl on the back in thanks for helping her out. She now turned back and started counting people as they headed out their side of the train, wanting to make sure that everyone got out okay. It wouldn't do to leave anyone in the hands of their former captors, let alone unconscious in a quickly spreading fire.

It never failed to surprise Jenny how crazy things got when you were leading an attack. All the planning in the world didn't help when things started exploding.

She was with a small group of her forces, and they were armed with a mix of ordinary firearms and mutant powers. Jenny herself was shooting at the Magistrate forces that had begun to spill off the train when she caught a glimpse of a group getting off the train who were very obviously not part of those forces.

"We've got some movement over there," she said to one of her comrades, gesturing in that direction. "Cover me while I get closer. You, come with me." After a moment's pause to ensure her orders had been heard she moved, making her way towards the group getting off the train.

"Ow. Ow. ow." Kyle picked his way out of the wreck, stumbling a little as he finally came out of the pile of train cars. The lack of balance was disorientating all on its own, not to mention that he was so not used to actually aching all over like this. Bruises sucked. He braced himself against the side of a car and offered an arm to Jubilee as she clambered out. "Kay, now what do we do?"

Jubilee was about to shrug when she spotted the people heading toward them. She poked Kyle in the side and pointed toward them, loosening her stance as she got ready to fight if necessary.

Ororo was helping the others out of the jagged hole that was their makeshift 'door' out of the car when she noticed movement coming their way; the newcomers were moving warily, but not with outright hostility. As soon as she was able she moved towards the front of the group, frowning as she took in the teenaged girl at the front of the group. What sort of army was this?

"We are unarmed," she said in a voice that carried, holding up her hands to prove her statement - as if their suits weren't sign enough of how helpless they were. "And no friend of Genosha's government."

Jenny lowered her gun for a moment, looking the group over. It wasn't easy to see, with the fire and the smoke, but it seemed the group weren't acting like mutates usually used.

"Hold your fire," she instructed, moving forward a few feet so she could see better.

"Who are you?"

“Mutants from America,” North replied shortly but honestly, allowing apparent fatigue and worry to colour his greyed and bearded face. He held himself in a deceptively relaxed posture with shoulders slumped forward, but was standing next to Ororo with Angel and Layla placed strategically behind them, and a gun in his hand despite what his teammate had just declared.

“Some of us were kidnapped. And the rest captured when we tried to bring them home. We were on our way to be ‘processed’, I believe.” Deciding that was enough information, the spy frowned at the teenage girl and added: “Who are you?”

"We're resistance fighters," Jenny replied, lowering her gun completely. Were they -- no, the coincidence would be too much, really. "I'm Jenny Ransome --" Anything else she was about to say was cut off, as her gun came up quickly to shoot a soldier that was advancing on them.

"I'm afraid we don't have any more time to chat. Get down!" Her gun fired again, Jenny's attention now on the forces spilling from the train. It seemed these people were friendly - or at least, they claimed not to be friendly with the government, which Jenny only took as a good sign.

Layla was really, really over gunfire and blood and brains exploding out of the backs of peoples skulls. Like, way over it. Which was why her useless ass mostly stated back where Herr North and Ms Frost seemed to want her while pretty much everyone else shot or beat Magistrates to death. As much as she didn't want to see people getting killed, she also couldn't manage to look away. The resistance fighters seemed to know what they were doing and the people who'd come off the train with Layla were obviously happy to help even if they were sort of beaten and worn down. Someone got too close through a hole left by people advancing on the Magistrates once. A hard smack with the extended asp to their skull put him down, though, and Layla stared at the pooling blood while she backed away to a safer position until it was over.

And when it was over the Magistrates were all dead, or maybe some were playing dead or maybe some had run away. Layla wasn't sure, it sort of started to blur together a bit. Everything started to come into sharper focus as things died down, though. The scent of blood and feces and urine mixing as bodies let go of everything inside them. They were still sorting stuff out when Layla saw Jenny nearby and asked simply, "What happened to Phillip?"

"In prison," Jenny replied shortly. Or at least that was where she assumed he still was. They'd been separated on their return to Genosha, and Jenny hadn't heard or seen him since. It wasn't anything she really liked to talk about.

"Time to get out of here," Jenny called in a loud voice. "Confiscate whatever guns and ammunition you can, and then we're leaving." She looked over at the group of American mutants, her resolve not having faltered despite the mention of the boy she loved.

"You're welcome to come with us." They'd handled themselves well in the fight - and lord knows they could use more help.

There was safety and strength in numbers, and until they could regroup and plan their next moves Ororo could see no better option than to join with Jenny and her group. "Thank you," she said gratefully, and then turned to begin organising her own people's retreat.

All of them had a moment of surprise as Jenny walked through them, and at her touch, their mutant abilities returned. Even Liam jolted when his powers came back, and he flashed the teenaged girl a grin.

"Is this a recruiting technique? Because darling, you had me at 'derail the train with explosives'."