Genosha - Stemming the Tide: Attack Part 6
Jun. 2nd, 2012 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsJoined by Wanda and Marius, Emma, Jean-Phillipe and Fred come up with a desperate plan to take down Mutate 105.
Mutate 105 slashed at Fred as he approached her again, teeth bared and a low growl coming from her throat. It was clear they were at a stalemate, the mutate that had been Yvette too fast and limber for them to simply disable. At least they'd been able to keep her occupied.
Wanda and Marius pounded for the group. It was impossible to miss the crashing in the brush, even with the forest writhing at the other end of the camp. They had identified Fred's bulk, the flash of Jean-Phillipe's powers, and even the diamond glint of Emma. It was apparent all three of them were fighting something -- and they were making no headway. Most of the refugees had evacuated by now, leaving no further need to defend the camp. They needed to withdraw, and quickly.
Then they finally came close enough to get a decent look at the enemy, and Marius stopped short. The weaving, slashing shape of Fred's assailant was unfamiliar, but when mutants were concerned Marius' primary method of identification was not visual. Though the genetic signature he detected was twisted and augmented in a way that scraped the edge of his power's ability to process, the base was unmistakable.
"Yvette?"
For a moment, all Wanda could do was rest against a tree as she stared at the sight. That couldn't be Yvette, couldn't be the girl she'd given that map to so many years ago. But she knew without a doubt that it was. That she was facing the Campbell situation all over again only it was so much worse. And that she was holding her own against three mutants and that they needed help.
"Goddamn the people who put us in this position," she whispered and then, despite the burning pain in her side, shoved herself off the tree and headed in.
Mutate 105 spun at the movement, glowing eyes narrowing into slits and another growl coming from her throat. With an almost animalistic grace, she leapt for a nearby tree, scrabbling up into its branches to disappear momentarily. It was only a brief moment, however, as she abruptly jumped down on Fred, slashing at his face and shoulders.
Marius watched her cleave at Fred's impermeable flesh, at a loss. He wasn't using chaos. Even if it hadn't been Yvette, camp had soured him on the option. He still had shifting, and shifting gave him speed, but nothing that would allow him to touch her -- and then Marius frowned. An idea was forming.
"Fred!" the X-Man called over Yvette's snarls. "Can you hold her?"
Fred, while fairly nimble in his enlarged form, seemed to move in slow motion compared to their former friend and comrade. He barely was able to register Marius' question, "Hold her? Ah can't fuckin catch her...!!!" Fred tried again to plead with Yvette, "C'mon Copper Top. It's me. Fred. Big fat one. Won't leave the garage..."
Mutate 105 simply snarled, ripping at his face in an attempt to blind him. Only Fred's instinctive reaction - flinging his hands up and away, knocking her off him - saved his eyesight. It was only a brief respite, as Mutate 105 landed with eerie grace into the crouch they knew well from Yvette's Danger Room training, before launching herself back at Fred.
It hurt, to see Fred try to reach out to his friend and get nothing in return except renewed attack. Jean-Phillipe wished he knew some set of magic words to break through the mutate conditioning and reach wherever Yvette's self might be chained inside. But he did not. And so he continued to blast and move, vexed by his role as mere distraction. Then he heard Marius, who clearly had a plan. He stayed on the alert, ready for whatever gambit his teammate had in mind.
Marius forced himself away from echoing Jean-Phillipe's thoughts about Yvette. If they could just get this done . . . "Frost!" he called, unsure where the telepath was but knowing she had to be close. "Into my head a moment!"
Emma cursed at Marius's words, but turned and ran a short distance until she could place a tree between her and what had been Yvette. It wasn't much protection, but she wasn't willing to drop diamond form until she was a reasonable distance from those flashing claws. The first near miss had been enough. She turned back to flesh and reached a telepathic ear into Marius's mind. ~Tell me.~ Her tone was imperative, but from his, Marius obviously knew something he thought might be helpful and anything would do at this point.
Suppressing a wince at the invasion, Marius didn't bother with any lead up. Sudden knowledge of what he knew about Jean-Phillipe and Fred's powers cascaded into Emma's mind, as well as what he knew about Yvette's. And then, finally, a melange of images that formed a scenario.
Emma assessed the knowledge dumped into her mind by Marius and nodded. ~Could work,~ she sent and then reached out and tapped into Jean-Phillipe's mind, a nearly painful thrust through his natural shielding. ~Can you do this?~ she asked and dumped a quick precis of what she needed him to do in his head, even as her mind quickly filled the others in the team in on their roles.
Jean-Phillipe grunted at the mental intrusion. Communication was one thing, dumping an entire plan into his head whole was something else. ~I shall -make- it work,~ he sent back. For Yvette, he would find a way. That these culs had turned la petite rouge into little more than an animal...
"Right," Marius muttered. He took a few steps back and allowed the shifting to take him. Here she goes . . .
The skinsuit Fred was wearing was tough, but even it couldn't withstand repeated punishment from razor-sharp skin. Mutate 105 had sprung off the ground onto Fred's chest - he'd managed to hold her at arm's length by the throat to protect his face from her hands, but her feet were ripping away at his stomach and abdomen like a cat, long toe-claws catching in the skinsuit and tearing it open.
The attacks didn't penetrate his skin, but the pressure from the blows still caused Fred's heart to leap into his throat. Or it might have been something else.
Fred tried shaking Yvette, almost to the point of babbling by the time he found his voice again, "Vette, knock it out, c'mon it's your friends, Copper Top, calm down, seriously stop get down STOP!" Fred shouted at Yvette as he tightened his grip on her throat and swung her towards the nearest outcropping of trees, his face etched in panic.
Mutate 105 growled as she hit the ground, rolling several times before regaining her balance. Her eyes glowed brighter, fixed on Fred and the tensed to spring again...
...only to have to leap away from the tree that came crashing down on top of her. The leap was only partially successful, as she was momentarily pinned by several branches. She immediately began hacking away at them, wood chips flying in all directions as she began to free herself.
Wanda cursed and ducked back to avoid almost an entire branch that came flying from the hex blasted tree. It had slowed Yvette down but obviously not enough; she was back peddling now, knowing that if Yvette managed to get free before one of the heavies came up, she'd be in the line of fire. And either she would have ended up doing something she would regret later or she would have ended up gutted and neither of those things appealed to her.
Before Yvette could regain her bearings long enough to return her attention to Fred a huge, streaked panther leapt across her path. It roared in challenge, tail lashing, and bounded past her and away from the trainee.
The feral attributes spliced into Yvette had the effect he'd been hoping for: she answered the challenge with an instinctive lunge. Marius continued to run, focused on buying the time they needed, but for all her bulk she was fast, and he lacked Catseye's familiarity with the form. The same inexperience that decreased his stealth betrayed him now with a crucial mistep that twisted a hindleg, slowing him -- just long enough for Yvette's claws to close on the last half of his tail.
On, and then through.
The scream that ripped through the forest was animalistic and yet oddly not. Unsure of what happened but knowing that Marius had gotten injured, Wanda immediately moved forward again. Yvette was closing back in on Marius as whatever pain he was in distracted him enough to allow her to get in closer to inflict more damage. Or end it, if possible.
The hex bolt didn't hit her or get anywhere close but it hit the ground at her feet, forcing her to jump back. Another blast, another few feet of space between Yvette and Marius. Blast after blast, draining and exhausting but it was working. At least until Yvette figured out how to work around it but Wanda was banking on the fact that she wasn't the only on in this fight.
The end of his spine was on fire -- his balance was off now, how could something that minor affect his balance -- but he wasn't letting Wanda's distraction go to waste. Marius roared again, now as much in pain as in challenge, and gave the mutate no time to turn her focus elsewhere. He whipped past her and doubled back, running full tilt towards a clump of brush . . .
. . . in which waited Jean-Phillipe and Emma.
Jean-Phillipe understood the theory and the strategy behind the tactical plan Emma had dumped into his head. The question of whether or not he could pull it off that Emma had posed was more than a conversational formality, though.
Electrical charge naturally prefers to move from a location of high charge to locations of low charge, and to establish an equilibrium state with no net electrical charge. Jean-Phillipe, by virtue of the specialized organs in his body, was a natural collection of high charge. In a rest state, his body would maintain a low level of current on his skin, higher than that of a person without his power, as the charge developed in his body naturally dissipated into the air. In using his powers, he created a more concentrated electrical field, providing a channel for the charge to move through in the form of bolts of energy.
Instead of either of those, Jean-Phillipe was going to do something completely unnatural for him. He held his hands a little less than a foot apart and took a deep breath. A small arc of electricity jumped from one palm to the other, and rather than allow it to discharge anywhere, the Frenchman's eyes narrowed, and a second arc jumped back from the second palm to the first.
The electric flux through any closed surface is proportional to the enclosed electric charge. He could practically hear Erik lecturing in his head, drilling the basics of electromagnetic theory into him. Create more charge, enclose the 'surface', and create a greater amount of flux. This is what Jean-Phillipe did as he poured more and more charge into the space between his hands. More and more arcs jumped between his palms, until they all began to curl together into a larger, solid thing that snapped wildly within the containment he was mentally exerting on it.
At first it was about the width of a finger. Positive feedback is the process in which the effects of a small disturbance on a system include an increase in the magnitude of the perturbation. As he poured more and more charge into his hands, the arc began to grow, more and more quickly. Now the size of a large coin, then as wide as his wrist. The energy began to glow, whiter and more piercing, as it began to bulge in the center, shaping itself into a ball. Torchigin posits that ball lightning might be a form of self-confined intense light.
"Whenever...you are ready...Mam'selle Frost," Jean-Phillipe grunted as sweat began to pour down his face.
Emma had never attempted to deny that she was a vain creature, but nor had she ever attempted to deny that she had a formidable engineering intelligence. When her secondary mutation had first manifested, she had spent a great deal of time entertaining herself by admiring the beauty of her diamond form while also exploring her capacity for refraction and reflection.
Emma blessed that combination of vanity and scientific obsession now as she watched the fight before her from tree she was sheltering behind as she stripped down to her underwear. She had barely taken her shirt off when Jean-Phillipe’s call came and she darted from behind the tree she’d been sheltering behind and manoeuvred herself between him and what had been Yvette. Tracking minds with her telepathy allowed her to place herself in the optimum position before she switched abruptly into diamond form.
The white light that emanated from Jean-Phillipe’s ball lightning shifted was suddenly behind diamond facets. With a twist of her torso, Emma changed the refraction of the light, so what burst from her chest and throat was a bright beam of focussed white light.
The light struck Mutate 105 full in the face, a spotlight of dazzling proportions. An almost-human cry of pain escaped her and she covered up her sensitive eyes with her hands, backing blindly into Fred's arms.
Fred wanted anything else in the world to be happening as his arms expanded and grew. When Yvette was close enough, Fred wrapped one of his arms around her midsection and the other across her shoulders and face. Even at her enlarged size, Fred's grip almost swallowed her whole, "Jus...just stay calm, Yvette. Just try an...an calm down..."
Electroshock uses a temporary high-voltage, low-current electrical discharge to override the body's muscle triggering mechanisms.
Usually, the 'voice' in Jean-Phillipe's head providing guidance when he used his powers was the memory of Erik Lensherr educating him on electromagnetic theory. Gauss, Faraday, Maxwell, Ampere (his favorite, as a Frenchman)...the discoveries of all the greats had been drilled into him. But Magneto had not been the one to teach him about the human nervous system and how his power would affect it.
The recipient feels pain, and can be momentarily paralyzed while an electric current is being applied.
Jean-Phillipe might have mocked her as bookish, a know-it-all, and other similar jibes, but Laurie had taught him nearly as much about the human body as Erik had about electricity. She'd bulled him into sessions with a copy of Grey's Anatomy and diagrams of the interior workings of the body.
The maximum effective areas for stun gun usage are upper shoulder - the musculocutaneous nerve, below the rib cage - the subcostal nerve, and the upper hip - the obturator or genitofemoral nerves.
He could practically hear the pedantic words coming from Laurie's mouth. Laurie, who reports said had been turned to a 'mutate' just like his fellow resident adviser, who Fred was grappling with. Perhaps if he could provide a large enough shock...
Prolonged or repeated blasts can impair respiratory function, and can be exacerbated by physical restraint.
Yvette's hardened skin provided a natural resistance to Jean-Phillipe's power, but a large enough shock might achieve the goal of Marius' tactical plan that Emma had shoved into his head. He briefly considered throwing the ball lightning between his hands, but discarded that as too imprecise. Instead, he darted around Emma, towards where Yvette thrashed in Fred's grip. As he lunged forward, like a rugby player dashing for the try-line, he continued to pour more and more charge out of his hands. Somewhere between Emma and Fred, he began to howl hoarsely with rage.
Fred's arms were wrapped tightly around Yvette's head and shoulders, so Jean-Phillipe aimed for the base of Yvette's spine. The ball touched her, and then there was a violent discharge of the pent-up energy. There was another brilliant flash, and Jean-Phillipe was thrown backward several feet and onto his back.
The mutate stiffened, arching her back, her limbs jerking out stiffly and her skin erupting into spikes all over. Then she slumped unconscious in Fred's grasp, the combination of being suffocated and electrocuted combining to knock her out.
As she lost consciousness, her mass shrank, her skin smoothing out until she looked like a girl again, a girl with dark red skin, a shaved head and the number 105 tattooed on her forehead.
Marius limped out of the brush, human now, and naked. Almost two thirds of the tail Catseye's mutation had given him was missing, exposing a nub of bone. Though he was sweating with pain, it wasn't until he saw Fred laying the tiny girl down like a child's doll that his face twisted.
"Fuck," he whispered, then gasped as his tail gave an involuntary spasm. Marius grit his teeth and grabbed the bleeding stump, holding it tight in one fist to staunch the bleeding and limit movement. He wiped his forehead with his free hand and looked hopelessly at Yvette. "She's down, but . . . what do we do with her?"
The sight Yvette looking almost like herself again and vulnerable brought the entire messed up situation in sharp focus for Wanda. Turning her head slightly so they couldn't see the sudden sheen of tears in her eyes, she knew that what she was going to say wasn't going to be very popular with several people. "I do not think there is much we can do," she said, turning back only when she'd gotten herself more firmly under control. "We have nothing to tie her up with and if we try to take her as is, we will have yet another fight on our hands when she wakes up."
"Bullshit." Fred's bulk was between the assembled group and Yvette's form, and was tall enough to almost shade them, "Bull. Shit. Ah ain't leavin her here. Where are the others that are missing? What about Angelo? What about Callie!?" Fred's hands were knotted into large fists, "Y'all can go tah hell, cause Ah ain't jus...just leavin her or anyone else just layin on the damned ground...!!!"
Jean-Phillipe had managed to lever himself up on an elbow from the ground, but he was clearly drained by the huge blast of power he had expended. "I do not like it either, Fred," he said slowly, "but Mam'selle Maximoff is correct. What happens when she wakes up and she slits all of our throats so that she can return to her handler?" They simply had no way of containing her. Some of the other mutates, perhaps they might have created a solution. But Yvette's power was too deadly, too unstoppable and uncontainable. And Emma had already demonstrated that attempting to contact their minds was not feasible. He struggled to his knees. "We must look to our own safety, first. We are of no use to her dead."
"Nah. Nahnahnahnah screw all kindsa that!" Fred shouted, leaning down to scoop up Yvette, "We jus...jus gotta...hell, Ah...!"
"She will kill us," said Emma, stalking over and looking down at the body on the ground, even as Fred reached for her. "And my compassion does not extend to having my throat cut." It was not Fred listening to her words, or his own volition, that made him straighten up and then step over Yvette's body to stand silently in front of Emma. "I'm sorry," she said to him, but didn't remove the hooks she'd sunk deep into his brain. "But you will get us killed." She reached out and touched his cheek gently, just for a moment. "I promise we will save her. I promise, Fred. We will save all of them. But not now. Now we run."
Mutate 105 slashed at Fred as he approached her again, teeth bared and a low growl coming from her throat. It was clear they were at a stalemate, the mutate that had been Yvette too fast and limber for them to simply disable. At least they'd been able to keep her occupied.
Wanda and Marius pounded for the group. It was impossible to miss the crashing in the brush, even with the forest writhing at the other end of the camp. They had identified Fred's bulk, the flash of Jean-Phillipe's powers, and even the diamond glint of Emma. It was apparent all three of them were fighting something -- and they were making no headway. Most of the refugees had evacuated by now, leaving no further need to defend the camp. They needed to withdraw, and quickly.
Then they finally came close enough to get a decent look at the enemy, and Marius stopped short. The weaving, slashing shape of Fred's assailant was unfamiliar, but when mutants were concerned Marius' primary method of identification was not visual. Though the genetic signature he detected was twisted and augmented in a way that scraped the edge of his power's ability to process, the base was unmistakable.
"Yvette?"
For a moment, all Wanda could do was rest against a tree as she stared at the sight. That couldn't be Yvette, couldn't be the girl she'd given that map to so many years ago. But she knew without a doubt that it was. That she was facing the Campbell situation all over again only it was so much worse. And that she was holding her own against three mutants and that they needed help.
"Goddamn the people who put us in this position," she whispered and then, despite the burning pain in her side, shoved herself off the tree and headed in.
Mutate 105 spun at the movement, glowing eyes narrowing into slits and another growl coming from her throat. With an almost animalistic grace, she leapt for a nearby tree, scrabbling up into its branches to disappear momentarily. It was only a brief moment, however, as she abruptly jumped down on Fred, slashing at his face and shoulders.
Marius watched her cleave at Fred's impermeable flesh, at a loss. He wasn't using chaos. Even if it hadn't been Yvette, camp had soured him on the option. He still had shifting, and shifting gave him speed, but nothing that would allow him to touch her -- and then Marius frowned. An idea was forming.
"Fred!" the X-Man called over Yvette's snarls. "Can you hold her?"
Fred, while fairly nimble in his enlarged form, seemed to move in slow motion compared to their former friend and comrade. He barely was able to register Marius' question, "Hold her? Ah can't fuckin catch her...!!!" Fred tried again to plead with Yvette, "C'mon Copper Top. It's me. Fred. Big fat one. Won't leave the garage..."
Mutate 105 simply snarled, ripping at his face in an attempt to blind him. Only Fred's instinctive reaction - flinging his hands up and away, knocking her off him - saved his eyesight. It was only a brief respite, as Mutate 105 landed with eerie grace into the crouch they knew well from Yvette's Danger Room training, before launching herself back at Fred.
It hurt, to see Fred try to reach out to his friend and get nothing in return except renewed attack. Jean-Phillipe wished he knew some set of magic words to break through the mutate conditioning and reach wherever Yvette's self might be chained inside. But he did not. And so he continued to blast and move, vexed by his role as mere distraction. Then he heard Marius, who clearly had a plan. He stayed on the alert, ready for whatever gambit his teammate had in mind.
Marius forced himself away from echoing Jean-Phillipe's thoughts about Yvette. If they could just get this done . . . "Frost!" he called, unsure where the telepath was but knowing she had to be close. "Into my head a moment!"
Emma cursed at Marius's words, but turned and ran a short distance until she could place a tree between her and what had been Yvette. It wasn't much protection, but she wasn't willing to drop diamond form until she was a reasonable distance from those flashing claws. The first near miss had been enough. She turned back to flesh and reached a telepathic ear into Marius's mind. ~Tell me.~ Her tone was imperative, but from his, Marius obviously knew something he thought might be helpful and anything would do at this point.
Suppressing a wince at the invasion, Marius didn't bother with any lead up. Sudden knowledge of what he knew about Jean-Phillipe and Fred's powers cascaded into Emma's mind, as well as what he knew about Yvette's. And then, finally, a melange of images that formed a scenario.
Emma assessed the knowledge dumped into her mind by Marius and nodded. ~Could work,~ she sent and then reached out and tapped into Jean-Phillipe's mind, a nearly painful thrust through his natural shielding. ~Can you do this?~ she asked and dumped a quick precis of what she needed him to do in his head, even as her mind quickly filled the others in the team in on their roles.
Jean-Phillipe grunted at the mental intrusion. Communication was one thing, dumping an entire plan into his head whole was something else. ~I shall -make- it work,~ he sent back. For Yvette, he would find a way. That these culs had turned la petite rouge into little more than an animal...
"Right," Marius muttered. He took a few steps back and allowed the shifting to take him. Here she goes . . .
The skinsuit Fred was wearing was tough, but even it couldn't withstand repeated punishment from razor-sharp skin. Mutate 105 had sprung off the ground onto Fred's chest - he'd managed to hold her at arm's length by the throat to protect his face from her hands, but her feet were ripping away at his stomach and abdomen like a cat, long toe-claws catching in the skinsuit and tearing it open.
The attacks didn't penetrate his skin, but the pressure from the blows still caused Fred's heart to leap into his throat. Or it might have been something else.
Fred tried shaking Yvette, almost to the point of babbling by the time he found his voice again, "Vette, knock it out, c'mon it's your friends, Copper Top, calm down, seriously stop get down STOP!" Fred shouted at Yvette as he tightened his grip on her throat and swung her towards the nearest outcropping of trees, his face etched in panic.
Mutate 105 growled as she hit the ground, rolling several times before regaining her balance. Her eyes glowed brighter, fixed on Fred and the tensed to spring again...
...only to have to leap away from the tree that came crashing down on top of her. The leap was only partially successful, as she was momentarily pinned by several branches. She immediately began hacking away at them, wood chips flying in all directions as she began to free herself.
Wanda cursed and ducked back to avoid almost an entire branch that came flying from the hex blasted tree. It had slowed Yvette down but obviously not enough; she was back peddling now, knowing that if Yvette managed to get free before one of the heavies came up, she'd be in the line of fire. And either she would have ended up doing something she would regret later or she would have ended up gutted and neither of those things appealed to her.
Before Yvette could regain her bearings long enough to return her attention to Fred a huge, streaked panther leapt across her path. It roared in challenge, tail lashing, and bounded past her and away from the trainee.
The feral attributes spliced into Yvette had the effect he'd been hoping for: she answered the challenge with an instinctive lunge. Marius continued to run, focused on buying the time they needed, but for all her bulk she was fast, and he lacked Catseye's familiarity with the form. The same inexperience that decreased his stealth betrayed him now with a crucial mistep that twisted a hindleg, slowing him -- just long enough for Yvette's claws to close on the last half of his tail.
On, and then through.
The scream that ripped through the forest was animalistic and yet oddly not. Unsure of what happened but knowing that Marius had gotten injured, Wanda immediately moved forward again. Yvette was closing back in on Marius as whatever pain he was in distracted him enough to allow her to get in closer to inflict more damage. Or end it, if possible.
The hex bolt didn't hit her or get anywhere close but it hit the ground at her feet, forcing her to jump back. Another blast, another few feet of space between Yvette and Marius. Blast after blast, draining and exhausting but it was working. At least until Yvette figured out how to work around it but Wanda was banking on the fact that she wasn't the only on in this fight.
The end of his spine was on fire -- his balance was off now, how could something that minor affect his balance -- but he wasn't letting Wanda's distraction go to waste. Marius roared again, now as much in pain as in challenge, and gave the mutate no time to turn her focus elsewhere. He whipped past her and doubled back, running full tilt towards a clump of brush . . .
. . . in which waited Jean-Phillipe and Emma.
Jean-Phillipe understood the theory and the strategy behind the tactical plan Emma had dumped into his head. The question of whether or not he could pull it off that Emma had posed was more than a conversational formality, though.
Electrical charge naturally prefers to move from a location of high charge to locations of low charge, and to establish an equilibrium state with no net electrical charge. Jean-Phillipe, by virtue of the specialized organs in his body, was a natural collection of high charge. In a rest state, his body would maintain a low level of current on his skin, higher than that of a person without his power, as the charge developed in his body naturally dissipated into the air. In using his powers, he created a more concentrated electrical field, providing a channel for the charge to move through in the form of bolts of energy.
Instead of either of those, Jean-Phillipe was going to do something completely unnatural for him. He held his hands a little less than a foot apart and took a deep breath. A small arc of electricity jumped from one palm to the other, and rather than allow it to discharge anywhere, the Frenchman's eyes narrowed, and a second arc jumped back from the second palm to the first.
The electric flux through any closed surface is proportional to the enclosed electric charge. He could practically hear Erik lecturing in his head, drilling the basics of electromagnetic theory into him. Create more charge, enclose the 'surface', and create a greater amount of flux. This is what Jean-Phillipe did as he poured more and more charge into the space between his hands. More and more arcs jumped between his palms, until they all began to curl together into a larger, solid thing that snapped wildly within the containment he was mentally exerting on it.
At first it was about the width of a finger. Positive feedback is the process in which the effects of a small disturbance on a system include an increase in the magnitude of the perturbation. As he poured more and more charge into his hands, the arc began to grow, more and more quickly. Now the size of a large coin, then as wide as his wrist. The energy began to glow, whiter and more piercing, as it began to bulge in the center, shaping itself into a ball. Torchigin posits that ball lightning might be a form of self-confined intense light.
"Whenever...you are ready...Mam'selle Frost," Jean-Phillipe grunted as sweat began to pour down his face.
Emma had never attempted to deny that she was a vain creature, but nor had she ever attempted to deny that she had a formidable engineering intelligence. When her secondary mutation had first manifested, she had spent a great deal of time entertaining herself by admiring the beauty of her diamond form while also exploring her capacity for refraction and reflection.
Emma blessed that combination of vanity and scientific obsession now as she watched the fight before her from tree she was sheltering behind as she stripped down to her underwear. She had barely taken her shirt off when Jean-Phillipe’s call came and she darted from behind the tree she’d been sheltering behind and manoeuvred herself between him and what had been Yvette. Tracking minds with her telepathy allowed her to place herself in the optimum position before she switched abruptly into diamond form.
The white light that emanated from Jean-Phillipe’s ball lightning shifted was suddenly behind diamond facets. With a twist of her torso, Emma changed the refraction of the light, so what burst from her chest and throat was a bright beam of focussed white light.
The light struck Mutate 105 full in the face, a spotlight of dazzling proportions. An almost-human cry of pain escaped her and she covered up her sensitive eyes with her hands, backing blindly into Fred's arms.
Fred wanted anything else in the world to be happening as his arms expanded and grew. When Yvette was close enough, Fred wrapped one of his arms around her midsection and the other across her shoulders and face. Even at her enlarged size, Fred's grip almost swallowed her whole, "Jus...just stay calm, Yvette. Just try an...an calm down..."
Electroshock uses a temporary high-voltage, low-current electrical discharge to override the body's muscle triggering mechanisms.
Usually, the 'voice' in Jean-Phillipe's head providing guidance when he used his powers was the memory of Erik Lensherr educating him on electromagnetic theory. Gauss, Faraday, Maxwell, Ampere (his favorite, as a Frenchman)...the discoveries of all the greats had been drilled into him. But Magneto had not been the one to teach him about the human nervous system and how his power would affect it.
The recipient feels pain, and can be momentarily paralyzed while an electric current is being applied.
Jean-Phillipe might have mocked her as bookish, a know-it-all, and other similar jibes, but Laurie had taught him nearly as much about the human body as Erik had about electricity. She'd bulled him into sessions with a copy of Grey's Anatomy and diagrams of the interior workings of the body.
The maximum effective areas for stun gun usage are upper shoulder - the musculocutaneous nerve, below the rib cage - the subcostal nerve, and the upper hip - the obturator or genitofemoral nerves.
He could practically hear the pedantic words coming from Laurie's mouth. Laurie, who reports said had been turned to a 'mutate' just like his fellow resident adviser, who Fred was grappling with. Perhaps if he could provide a large enough shock...
Prolonged or repeated blasts can impair respiratory function, and can be exacerbated by physical restraint.
Yvette's hardened skin provided a natural resistance to Jean-Phillipe's power, but a large enough shock might achieve the goal of Marius' tactical plan that Emma had shoved into his head. He briefly considered throwing the ball lightning between his hands, but discarded that as too imprecise. Instead, he darted around Emma, towards where Yvette thrashed in Fred's grip. As he lunged forward, like a rugby player dashing for the try-line, he continued to pour more and more charge out of his hands. Somewhere between Emma and Fred, he began to howl hoarsely with rage.
Fred's arms were wrapped tightly around Yvette's head and shoulders, so Jean-Phillipe aimed for the base of Yvette's spine. The ball touched her, and then there was a violent discharge of the pent-up energy. There was another brilliant flash, and Jean-Phillipe was thrown backward several feet and onto his back.
The mutate stiffened, arching her back, her limbs jerking out stiffly and her skin erupting into spikes all over. Then she slumped unconscious in Fred's grasp, the combination of being suffocated and electrocuted combining to knock her out.
As she lost consciousness, her mass shrank, her skin smoothing out until she looked like a girl again, a girl with dark red skin, a shaved head and the number 105 tattooed on her forehead.
Marius limped out of the brush, human now, and naked. Almost two thirds of the tail Catseye's mutation had given him was missing, exposing a nub of bone. Though he was sweating with pain, it wasn't until he saw Fred laying the tiny girl down like a child's doll that his face twisted.
"Fuck," he whispered, then gasped as his tail gave an involuntary spasm. Marius grit his teeth and grabbed the bleeding stump, holding it tight in one fist to staunch the bleeding and limit movement. He wiped his forehead with his free hand and looked hopelessly at Yvette. "She's down, but . . . what do we do with her?"
The sight Yvette looking almost like herself again and vulnerable brought the entire messed up situation in sharp focus for Wanda. Turning her head slightly so they couldn't see the sudden sheen of tears in her eyes, she knew that what she was going to say wasn't going to be very popular with several people. "I do not think there is much we can do," she said, turning back only when she'd gotten herself more firmly under control. "We have nothing to tie her up with and if we try to take her as is, we will have yet another fight on our hands when she wakes up."
"Bullshit." Fred's bulk was between the assembled group and Yvette's form, and was tall enough to almost shade them, "Bull. Shit. Ah ain't leavin her here. Where are the others that are missing? What about Angelo? What about Callie!?" Fred's hands were knotted into large fists, "Y'all can go tah hell, cause Ah ain't jus...just leavin her or anyone else just layin on the damned ground...!!!"
Jean-Phillipe had managed to lever himself up on an elbow from the ground, but he was clearly drained by the huge blast of power he had expended. "I do not like it either, Fred," he said slowly, "but Mam'selle Maximoff is correct. What happens when she wakes up and she slits all of our throats so that she can return to her handler?" They simply had no way of containing her. Some of the other mutates, perhaps they might have created a solution. But Yvette's power was too deadly, too unstoppable and uncontainable. And Emma had already demonstrated that attempting to contact their minds was not feasible. He struggled to his knees. "We must look to our own safety, first. We are of no use to her dead."
"Nah. Nahnahnahnah screw all kindsa that!" Fred shouted, leaning down to scoop up Yvette, "We jus...jus gotta...hell, Ah...!"
"She will kill us," said Emma, stalking over and looking down at the body on the ground, even as Fred reached for her. "And my compassion does not extend to having my throat cut." It was not Fred listening to her words, or his own volition, that made him straighten up and then step over Yvette's body to stand silently in front of Emma. "I'm sorry," she said to him, but didn't remove the hooks she'd sunk deep into his brain. "But you will get us killed." She reached out and touched his cheek gently, just for a moment. "I promise we will save her. I promise, Fred. We will save all of them. But not now. Now we run."
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Date: 2012-06-03 12:26 pm (UTC)And the bits with Emma, Marius, Jean-Phillipe and Fred. Seriously guys, it's just amazing.