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xp_logsMutate Amara and Betsy drive back the X-Men, but they haven't finished yet.
The ferocity of the attack had shaken them. Amara had always had impressive powers, but unleashed without restraint or concern about collateral damage made them immensely destructive and all but impossible to stand against. Braddock was moving her reinforcements forward, putting more pressure on the mutants and forcing them to give up ground, blocking them from the station.
As Vance retreated back under the onslaught, he gritted his teeth together in frustration as he moved to keep away from those flames. His head and body were surrounded almost constantly now by a pink nimbus, ready to strike at any opening Amara could give him and provide some distraction that would hopefully prevent her on focusing on some of the slightly more vulnerable of the group.
Betsy opened the mental floodgates, pushing Amara to the brink. Her thoughts were of heat and blazing fire, every edge of her mind burning. "I want nothing left of these terrorists. Burn them all." she ordered. Her magistrates would corner them and extinguish this threat once and for all. She identified the team leaders, focused her attack on them, and pointed them out. Releasing her mental leash and sending Amara after them. "Turn them into ash."
Mutate 606 didn't care that those she faced had once been friends, workmates, people she'd wanted to protect. She had orders, and her orders were to burn. Which was something she was very good at. Torrents of flame flew from her hands as she moved towards the group identified by her commander, pouring everything she had into obeying orders. The ground trembled with every step, flames dripping from her as she moved.
Vance moved as Amara advanced on them, his telekinesis coming up as a shield, forcing the mutate's strikes and blows to deflect away, even as her onslaught drove him and Paige back step by grudging step. He worked as well as he could with his unfamiliar teammate, both advancing and retreating as they worked Amara's attention between them, Vance's own focus solely on the very dangerous mutate that continued to threaten him, a number of those flames coming entirely too close for comfort as hot flames blistered his skin as he fought, not always able to avoid the rolling torrents of flame.
Adrienne tried not to dwell on the fact that her former assistant was trying to fry her team to death and tried to focus on the task at hand- using her weapons to provide cover to the people who could actually do damage against Amara without giving up their position. The wave of Magistrates advancing upon them was impressive, however, and she emptied a clip rather ineffectively into the crowd. “Anyone know any military tactics we could try?” she suggested to North and Layla.
Layla stared at her teacher like she’d gone crazy. “Yeah, hide in a big ass gorge like the Comanche when they weren’t attacking those asshole white dudes.” She had a bloodied, metal military baton in one hand and was tentatively peering over the top of a large equipment box of some sort she was hiding down behind. “If only they taught military tactics in the school I totally got kidnapped because of,” she muttered rapidly under her breath. Amara was fucking terrifying, the purple bitch was a fucking psycho and she was pretty sure 83 was maybe going to die trying to be a goddamn hero. And all those little military minions were fucking jumping at the psycho’s commands.
“Well, eighty-three can get clocked by that dude over there or that other dude can blow us up or maybe the psycho will just like make our brains explode.” She was grumbling and not focusing very well, or so Layla thought. But even as her mind raced two of those seemed like very real possibilities. And what she really, really needed was for Ms Frost and Herr North and her to not get blown up where they were and for 83 to not get clocked and then wind up unconscious and easy fucking kill bait. But what did they need to do that? And then, just like that, just like every other instinct she’d been playing off since they waded into this unholy fucking mess, Layla had an idea.
The blonde tapped North on the arm frantically and nodded up over the container. “Hey, can you take out that dude?” she asked, pointing to some guy who was barely visible in the shadows aside from the gleam of light off the end of the grenade launcher he was holding unbeknownst to Layla. “And that guy,” she pointed to another guy, close-ish to Vance but not really close enough to seem like a problem even though she was really fucking sure he was gonna be. She pointed to another three targets before realizing Herr North was giving her a look like she was on something. “Just do it! Like, now!”
Right. Of course. Swiftly holstering his Sig Sauer, North unceremoniously grabbed Adrienne’s rifle and levelled it at the half-hidden figure in the shadows. A burst of fire was followed immediately by a gurgled scream as the man went down, choking on his blood and still cradling a weapon that North had to strain to identify. Pivoting 90 degrees to the right, the marksman took more careful aim and shot the Magistrate that was almost upon Vance. A split second before he gunned down the man with pinpoint accuracy, his powers informed him that if he had not, Vance would been knocked unconscious and he would have been roasted next. North shivered despite having learned to mentally wrestle his drug withdrawal into submission during combat situations.
The next three targets went down easily after that. While Adrienne continued covering those out in the open, North ducked behind the container to reload the rifle, having given Adrienne one of his handguns in exchange for the ammo. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see a blond metamorph being launched at Amara.
“All right,” he told Layla even as he deftly worked over the firearm, expression serious. “If the both of us survive this, you and I are going to have a chat. If I happen to die, go look for Tarot and tell her I told you to.” Because the teenager had just practically confirmed his suspicions that there was more to her powers than just raising zombies. There were instincts, and then there were instincts. North was pretty sure Layla had the latter.
“And then maybe we should teach you how to shoot,” he half-grumbled, swinging the rifle onto his shoulder and rising into a half-crouch. His precognitive abilities were technically limited to outcomes pertaining directly to himself, although the spy had learned to compensate for it with years of experience and painstakingly honed instincts. It only made sense to rely on whatever kind of precognition the girl seemed to have if she could pick out potential threats to other people. North shot a Magistrate in the head. “Who next, Miss Miller?”
The blonde stared at Herr North, a little obviously shocked. In part because he’d totally listened to her and in part because that one dude really was going after Vance. And in part because she had no idea why he wanted to have a chat with her and didn’t actually know who the fuck Tarot was. She snapped out of her shock a beat after he asked who was next. Who next? “Uh...” Layla wracked her brain. She needed targets. How was she supposed to pick targets? But she’d totally just picked targets. A low, muffled yell, muted by the noise around them, came from the girl and then she took a deep breath. Targets. Targets. Who’s a threat? I need to live. And I need Herr North to live to explain what he’s talking about? And I need other people to live. And, wow I really need the people fighting the bad asses to live.
And Layla just started listing off targets as quickly as North could shoot them. She didn’t even realize she wasn’t actually looking over the container anymore, just listing locations and pointing to where unseen people were.
The sky over the battlefield grew dark and heavy with clouds; the ambient temperature of the air dropping until the combatants' breath began to billow out in clouds. The first few drops of rain fell unnoticed, but then they began to pelt down harder, hissing in the flames and striking the nearby buildings in a noisy staccato rhythm. Fighting fire with fire would've been inadvisable, under the circumstances, but there were other ways to deal with those particular threats...
Commander Braddock looked up at the clouds forming, noticed the puffs of air as the temperature dropped and then felt the cool drops of water on her skin. "The weather manipulator," she said like a curse. Taking matters into her own hands, The Commander drew her weapon and fired. She missed. The mutant was too far away. She turned to the mutate Amara, watching her decimate those that stood in her way. Looking from her mutate to the weather bitch up above, Betsy had a thought. "Amara, don't we hate the rain?"
Mutate 606 had been battling the combination of a telekinetic and a metamorph, and she'd moved swiftly from attack to attack, switching between pelting them with flame and battling them with various flaming weapons. Her favorites seemed to be either a flaming sword or blades, that she'd used to try and hack at the blonde and the telekinetic.
The rain falling on her just seemed to enrage her - where once she'd been eerily calm, battling through without emotion. As the rain began to pelt down, she took a deep breath, unleashing a wall of flame at those who dared to try stand against. She poured everything she had into those flames, pushing against the rain, determined not to let it stop her.
His teeth gritted under pressure, Vance's eyes flared a bright pink, and he lifted his hands up, his pink TK reaching out as he grabbed two crates, lifting them up into the air and toppling them over onto Amara as she advanced. "Husk, could use some help! I'll keep her distracted! Do what you can to her and I'll try to keep her off your ass!"
Even as Amara tore out and turned the rubble to flaming cinders, Vance pushed forward a few steps, his teke reaching out one by one, picking up items one or two at a time as he pelted Amara in constant barrage, metal and wood pelting her chest, torso in head in a near constant hailstorm. Deadly? Hardly. But it was clearly distracting enough, as once in a while Vance got in a good toss that struck across the mutate's face and vision.
Fingers starting to go red in the onslaught, Paige shook off her metal form, moving into an alloy with more rhodium in it. "Let's see you hit two thousand degrees, sugar!" she yelled, rapidly advancing. It was much easier with something else pulling Amara's attention, to dart in and around the other young woman, hitting kidneys, throat, back of knees. A blast pushed her back, but she used the heat to shake her fingertips into points, smiling razor sharp.
The mixture of precipitation was far from natural; sleet and rain and hail pummelled the area, a cold, wet mixture to combat the raging fire and spouting flames. Fog snaked around the legs of the X-Men, billowing up to provide cover and obfuscation from their attackers.
While Amara worked her flames at the mutants but kept her protected, Braddock closed her eyes and exhaled. She opened them again and found herself psychically hovering next to the weather maker. "Hmm, interesting mind there with a whole new set of neuroses for me to play. Table for two, astral plane." Commander Braddock reached out but just before she could enter Storm's mind, a loud CRACK, and a force sent her flying away from her.
Commander Braddock opened her eyes to find her ears ringing and a crater sized hole next to where she was standing. Lightning crackled around the white haired mutant.
The conversation going on around her between David and Layla wasn't entirely lost on Adrienne while she was firing on incoming Magistrates. David wanted her to go see Tarot... wasn't that Marie-Ange? And he was asking her about who he should concentrate on. Did he think she had precognitive abilities? Then of course, she noticed when she'd emptied all three of her weapons, there was the fact that the young woman was advising David from behind the container, without looking. Interesting. "Cuz just raising zombies wasn't cool enough?" she mused with a smirk at Layla as she ducked back down behind the container to reload. She reloaded one weapon, setting it at her feet while she worked on a second, then the third. With one in each hand she used her powers on them to get some perspective from her own precognition, and then set one down so she could hold the last with two hands while she fired. "Got any targets for me?" she asked.
"Huh?" Having missed the woman's first comment entirely, Layla hadn't been expecting the question from Ms Frost. The woman's voice had thrown her off track a little while she was searching for more people to take out. She looked over at her teacher with a rifle of some sort in her hands and sort of stared at her. "What? Oh targets. Yeah." She shook her head, obviously trying to clear the cobwebs that had settled in. Right, targets for Ms Frost, not for Herr North. Change gears, right? She got nothing at first. All that well worn street kid survival instinct was totally failing her here. Layla figured maybe she needed to look at the scene from her teacher's point of view, so while Ms Frost did her thing with the gun reading Layla did her peering around the corner of the container thing.
And then she knew. She just knew the problem wasn't Ms Frost shooting people but people shooting Ms Frost. The girl was still coming back from looking around the container when she put a hand directly down on a handgun. The safety switched off, the slide pulled back and Layla looked over Ms Frost's head just in enough time to spot the guy she already had the gun's sights set on. Without hesitating or thinking at all, she pulled the trigger. Layla swallowed hard. "Well, there's him."
Adrienne could only blink a few times as everything around her went silent. It wasn't until the ringing started that she realized Layla had just picked up and fired the third gun. Really, really close to her. She looked around the container, saw the man on the ground with the red stain in the middle of his chest and blinked some more. What with the shooting so close to her head she'd missed Layla's comment, or she would have said something along the lines of 'huh, well not anymore.' "I thought Ninja said you couldn't shoot?" she said instead, really loudly because she couldn't hear herself. "Hey, lookit that, Sunshine, you saved my life." Apparently near-death experiences and temporary deafness made her kind of giddy. "I wasn't too keen on you bringing me back as a zombie if that guy killed me, so thanks."
She was staring at the girl, noticing Layla's hands shaking and so she put one of hers over Layla's forearm and squeezed gently. She was about to ask if Layla was okay when two Magistrates came into view over Layla's shoulder, forcing Adrienne to let go of the girl's hand and go back to work. She wasn't sure if she should take the third weapon from Layla- it wasn't like she condoned kids killing people, but on the other hand, Layla had just saved her life, so she tried to catch North's gaze to leave things up to him.
Layla was freaked the fuck out. The gunshot seemed so much louder than all other gunshots ever, even when she was sitting next to Herr North firing round after round. The gun in her hand was shaking more and more. Did she just kill some guy? He was gonna shoot Ms Frost and once she was dead probably Layla and Herr North, too. So he wasn't like a good guy or anything. But he was, like, a person. A person who wasn't a person anymore. She swallowed hard and slowly set the gun down on the floor in front of her.
Entirely aware of what had happened, North had caught Adrienne’s eyes but could only spare the trembling girl a glance as he continued his killing spree without missing a beat, not quite willing to take his eyes off of Ororo, Paige and Vance and the unending swarm of Magistrates.
“Breathe, Miss Miller. You shot the enemy. Your arms will be numb from the recoil, your ears ringing from the shot,” he informed the girl calmly when he had to duck to reload, his voice raised over Adrianne’s gunfire. “When your head stops pounding, I want you to pick that gun up and switch on the safety.”
Here, the marksman hesitated mid-crouch, studying Layla with a frown and racing thoughts. It was unlikely that someone would always be around to keep her alive, and entirely possible that she would be put in a situation where she would be forced to defend herself. It was too clear to him that her instincts would not always be sufficient to save her. Mind made up, North returned to the battle, speaking in between shots. “Hang on to it. Use it only if you absolutely need to. Get rid of it as soon as you don’t need it anymore. Unless someone teaches you how to use it properly. Also, you won’t get to tell Adrienne ‘you’re welcome’ later if you go catatonic on her. So keep it together.”
All things considered, it was the best North could do. After all, dealing with feelings (especially little-person-feelings) was really not his forte.
Even as the raging battle between himself, Paige and Amara built into a frenzy of flames and colors, Vance just kept going, forcing his body to respond to what he needed to do. He put the searing pain from some very close calls out of his head and hardened the pink nimbus that surrounded him, forcing flame and blade away, even as he and Paige advanced on the out of control mutate.
Noting her ability to get in close without serious burn damage, Vance was struck by a sudden idea. "Husk!" he called out, glancing a look over towards her before diving aside from a burst of flame from Amara. "Brace yourself for impact, and get ready to do some damage!"
A pink light flared around Paige suddenly as Vance picked her up off the ground. As he pushed himself up to his feet, he clutched the air as if grabbing an invisible ball, and hurled it with all of his force at Amara. At the same time, his pink teke dragged Paige forward, and then hurtled her directly at Amara like the shot out of a cannon.
"Osmium got i-" Paige replied, trying not to let out an undignified squeak as she was thrown. The sheets of her former husk peeled off as she flew, creating a comet tail for the ball she pulled herself into; it was with a strange crack that the two of them collided, and Paige went skittering off to the side, finally resting several meters away.
The blow staggered the mutate, forcing her back and stopping the advance. Flames licked against Paige’s metal form as she slowly got to her feet, ready for rock to meet metal once more.
As the two young woman fought Ororo surveyed the scene from above; the worst of the fires were expiring under the heavy deluge of rain, the battlefield a slick morass of mud and puddled water. The remaining Magistrates did their best to defend their positions but as 'Commander Braddock' and Amara began to falter so did their support, and it seemed for the second time that day that maybe - just maybe - they might actually succeed. We have done our job... let us hope that Jenny and her people have done theirs.
The ferocity of the attack had shaken them. Amara had always had impressive powers, but unleashed without restraint or concern about collateral damage made them immensely destructive and all but impossible to stand against. Braddock was moving her reinforcements forward, putting more pressure on the mutants and forcing them to give up ground, blocking them from the station.
As Vance retreated back under the onslaught, he gritted his teeth together in frustration as he moved to keep away from those flames. His head and body were surrounded almost constantly now by a pink nimbus, ready to strike at any opening Amara could give him and provide some distraction that would hopefully prevent her on focusing on some of the slightly more vulnerable of the group.
Betsy opened the mental floodgates, pushing Amara to the brink. Her thoughts were of heat and blazing fire, every edge of her mind burning. "I want nothing left of these terrorists. Burn them all." she ordered. Her magistrates would corner them and extinguish this threat once and for all. She identified the team leaders, focused her attack on them, and pointed them out. Releasing her mental leash and sending Amara after them. "Turn them into ash."
Mutate 606 didn't care that those she faced had once been friends, workmates, people she'd wanted to protect. She had orders, and her orders were to burn. Which was something she was very good at. Torrents of flame flew from her hands as she moved towards the group identified by her commander, pouring everything she had into obeying orders. The ground trembled with every step, flames dripping from her as she moved.
Vance moved as Amara advanced on them, his telekinesis coming up as a shield, forcing the mutate's strikes and blows to deflect away, even as her onslaught drove him and Paige back step by grudging step. He worked as well as he could with his unfamiliar teammate, both advancing and retreating as they worked Amara's attention between them, Vance's own focus solely on the very dangerous mutate that continued to threaten him, a number of those flames coming entirely too close for comfort as hot flames blistered his skin as he fought, not always able to avoid the rolling torrents of flame.
Adrienne tried not to dwell on the fact that her former assistant was trying to fry her team to death and tried to focus on the task at hand- using her weapons to provide cover to the people who could actually do damage against Amara without giving up their position. The wave of Magistrates advancing upon them was impressive, however, and she emptied a clip rather ineffectively into the crowd. “Anyone know any military tactics we could try?” she suggested to North and Layla.
Layla stared at her teacher like she’d gone crazy. “Yeah, hide in a big ass gorge like the Comanche when they weren’t attacking those asshole white dudes.” She had a bloodied, metal military baton in one hand and was tentatively peering over the top of a large equipment box of some sort she was hiding down behind. “If only they taught military tactics in the school I totally got kidnapped because of,” she muttered rapidly under her breath. Amara was fucking terrifying, the purple bitch was a fucking psycho and she was pretty sure 83 was maybe going to die trying to be a goddamn hero. And all those little military minions were fucking jumping at the psycho’s commands.
“Well, eighty-three can get clocked by that dude over there or that other dude can blow us up or maybe the psycho will just like make our brains explode.” She was grumbling and not focusing very well, or so Layla thought. But even as her mind raced two of those seemed like very real possibilities. And what she really, really needed was for Ms Frost and Herr North and her to not get blown up where they were and for 83 to not get clocked and then wind up unconscious and easy fucking kill bait. But what did they need to do that? And then, just like that, just like every other instinct she’d been playing off since they waded into this unholy fucking mess, Layla had an idea.
The blonde tapped North on the arm frantically and nodded up over the container. “Hey, can you take out that dude?” she asked, pointing to some guy who was barely visible in the shadows aside from the gleam of light off the end of the grenade launcher he was holding unbeknownst to Layla. “And that guy,” she pointed to another guy, close-ish to Vance but not really close enough to seem like a problem even though she was really fucking sure he was gonna be. She pointed to another three targets before realizing Herr North was giving her a look like she was on something. “Just do it! Like, now!”
Right. Of course. Swiftly holstering his Sig Sauer, North unceremoniously grabbed Adrienne’s rifle and levelled it at the half-hidden figure in the shadows. A burst of fire was followed immediately by a gurgled scream as the man went down, choking on his blood and still cradling a weapon that North had to strain to identify. Pivoting 90 degrees to the right, the marksman took more careful aim and shot the Magistrate that was almost upon Vance. A split second before he gunned down the man with pinpoint accuracy, his powers informed him that if he had not, Vance would been knocked unconscious and he would have been roasted next. North shivered despite having learned to mentally wrestle his drug withdrawal into submission during combat situations.
The next three targets went down easily after that. While Adrienne continued covering those out in the open, North ducked behind the container to reload the rifle, having given Adrienne one of his handguns in exchange for the ammo. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see a blond metamorph being launched at Amara.
“All right,” he told Layla even as he deftly worked over the firearm, expression serious. “If the both of us survive this, you and I are going to have a chat. If I happen to die, go look for Tarot and tell her I told you to.” Because the teenager had just practically confirmed his suspicions that there was more to her powers than just raising zombies. There were instincts, and then there were instincts. North was pretty sure Layla had the latter.
“And then maybe we should teach you how to shoot,” he half-grumbled, swinging the rifle onto his shoulder and rising into a half-crouch. His precognitive abilities were technically limited to outcomes pertaining directly to himself, although the spy had learned to compensate for it with years of experience and painstakingly honed instincts. It only made sense to rely on whatever kind of precognition the girl seemed to have if she could pick out potential threats to other people. North shot a Magistrate in the head. “Who next, Miss Miller?”
The blonde stared at Herr North, a little obviously shocked. In part because he’d totally listened to her and in part because that one dude really was going after Vance. And in part because she had no idea why he wanted to have a chat with her and didn’t actually know who the fuck Tarot was. She snapped out of her shock a beat after he asked who was next. Who next? “Uh...” Layla wracked her brain. She needed targets. How was she supposed to pick targets? But she’d totally just picked targets. A low, muffled yell, muted by the noise around them, came from the girl and then she took a deep breath. Targets. Targets. Who’s a threat? I need to live. And I need Herr North to live to explain what he’s talking about? And I need other people to live. And, wow I really need the people fighting the bad asses to live.
And Layla just started listing off targets as quickly as North could shoot them. She didn’t even realize she wasn’t actually looking over the container anymore, just listing locations and pointing to where unseen people were.
The sky over the battlefield grew dark and heavy with clouds; the ambient temperature of the air dropping until the combatants' breath began to billow out in clouds. The first few drops of rain fell unnoticed, but then they began to pelt down harder, hissing in the flames and striking the nearby buildings in a noisy staccato rhythm. Fighting fire with fire would've been inadvisable, under the circumstances, but there were other ways to deal with those particular threats...
Commander Braddock looked up at the clouds forming, noticed the puffs of air as the temperature dropped and then felt the cool drops of water on her skin. "The weather manipulator," she said like a curse. Taking matters into her own hands, The Commander drew her weapon and fired. She missed. The mutant was too far away. She turned to the mutate Amara, watching her decimate those that stood in her way. Looking from her mutate to the weather bitch up above, Betsy had a thought. "Amara, don't we hate the rain?"
Mutate 606 had been battling the combination of a telekinetic and a metamorph, and she'd moved swiftly from attack to attack, switching between pelting them with flame and battling them with various flaming weapons. Her favorites seemed to be either a flaming sword or blades, that she'd used to try and hack at the blonde and the telekinetic.
The rain falling on her just seemed to enrage her - where once she'd been eerily calm, battling through without emotion. As the rain began to pelt down, she took a deep breath, unleashing a wall of flame at those who dared to try stand against. She poured everything she had into those flames, pushing against the rain, determined not to let it stop her.
His teeth gritted under pressure, Vance's eyes flared a bright pink, and he lifted his hands up, his pink TK reaching out as he grabbed two crates, lifting them up into the air and toppling them over onto Amara as she advanced. "Husk, could use some help! I'll keep her distracted! Do what you can to her and I'll try to keep her off your ass!"
Even as Amara tore out and turned the rubble to flaming cinders, Vance pushed forward a few steps, his teke reaching out one by one, picking up items one or two at a time as he pelted Amara in constant barrage, metal and wood pelting her chest, torso in head in a near constant hailstorm. Deadly? Hardly. But it was clearly distracting enough, as once in a while Vance got in a good toss that struck across the mutate's face and vision.
Fingers starting to go red in the onslaught, Paige shook off her metal form, moving into an alloy with more rhodium in it. "Let's see you hit two thousand degrees, sugar!" she yelled, rapidly advancing. It was much easier with something else pulling Amara's attention, to dart in and around the other young woman, hitting kidneys, throat, back of knees. A blast pushed her back, but she used the heat to shake her fingertips into points, smiling razor sharp.
The mixture of precipitation was far from natural; sleet and rain and hail pummelled the area, a cold, wet mixture to combat the raging fire and spouting flames. Fog snaked around the legs of the X-Men, billowing up to provide cover and obfuscation from their attackers.
While Amara worked her flames at the mutants but kept her protected, Braddock closed her eyes and exhaled. She opened them again and found herself psychically hovering next to the weather maker. "Hmm, interesting mind there with a whole new set of neuroses for me to play. Table for two, astral plane." Commander Braddock reached out but just before she could enter Storm's mind, a loud CRACK, and a force sent her flying away from her.
Commander Braddock opened her eyes to find her ears ringing and a crater sized hole next to where she was standing. Lightning crackled around the white haired mutant.
The conversation going on around her between David and Layla wasn't entirely lost on Adrienne while she was firing on incoming Magistrates. David wanted her to go see Tarot... wasn't that Marie-Ange? And he was asking her about who he should concentrate on. Did he think she had precognitive abilities? Then of course, she noticed when she'd emptied all three of her weapons, there was the fact that the young woman was advising David from behind the container, without looking. Interesting. "Cuz just raising zombies wasn't cool enough?" she mused with a smirk at Layla as she ducked back down behind the container to reload. She reloaded one weapon, setting it at her feet while she worked on a second, then the third. With one in each hand she used her powers on them to get some perspective from her own precognition, and then set one down so she could hold the last with two hands while she fired. "Got any targets for me?" she asked.
"Huh?" Having missed the woman's first comment entirely, Layla hadn't been expecting the question from Ms Frost. The woman's voice had thrown her off track a little while she was searching for more people to take out. She looked over at her teacher with a rifle of some sort in her hands and sort of stared at her. "What? Oh targets. Yeah." She shook her head, obviously trying to clear the cobwebs that had settled in. Right, targets for Ms Frost, not for Herr North. Change gears, right? She got nothing at first. All that well worn street kid survival instinct was totally failing her here. Layla figured maybe she needed to look at the scene from her teacher's point of view, so while Ms Frost did her thing with the gun reading Layla did her peering around the corner of the container thing.
And then she knew. She just knew the problem wasn't Ms Frost shooting people but people shooting Ms Frost. The girl was still coming back from looking around the container when she put a hand directly down on a handgun. The safety switched off, the slide pulled back and Layla looked over Ms Frost's head just in enough time to spot the guy she already had the gun's sights set on. Without hesitating or thinking at all, she pulled the trigger. Layla swallowed hard. "Well, there's him."
Adrienne could only blink a few times as everything around her went silent. It wasn't until the ringing started that she realized Layla had just picked up and fired the third gun. Really, really close to her. She looked around the container, saw the man on the ground with the red stain in the middle of his chest and blinked some more. What with the shooting so close to her head she'd missed Layla's comment, or she would have said something along the lines of 'huh, well not anymore.' "I thought Ninja said you couldn't shoot?" she said instead, really loudly because she couldn't hear herself. "Hey, lookit that, Sunshine, you saved my life." Apparently near-death experiences and temporary deafness made her kind of giddy. "I wasn't too keen on you bringing me back as a zombie if that guy killed me, so thanks."
She was staring at the girl, noticing Layla's hands shaking and so she put one of hers over Layla's forearm and squeezed gently. She was about to ask if Layla was okay when two Magistrates came into view over Layla's shoulder, forcing Adrienne to let go of the girl's hand and go back to work. She wasn't sure if she should take the third weapon from Layla- it wasn't like she condoned kids killing people, but on the other hand, Layla had just saved her life, so she tried to catch North's gaze to leave things up to him.
Layla was freaked the fuck out. The gunshot seemed so much louder than all other gunshots ever, even when she was sitting next to Herr North firing round after round. The gun in her hand was shaking more and more. Did she just kill some guy? He was gonna shoot Ms Frost and once she was dead probably Layla and Herr North, too. So he wasn't like a good guy or anything. But he was, like, a person. A person who wasn't a person anymore. She swallowed hard and slowly set the gun down on the floor in front of her.
Entirely aware of what had happened, North had caught Adrienne’s eyes but could only spare the trembling girl a glance as he continued his killing spree without missing a beat, not quite willing to take his eyes off of Ororo, Paige and Vance and the unending swarm of Magistrates.
“Breathe, Miss Miller. You shot the enemy. Your arms will be numb from the recoil, your ears ringing from the shot,” he informed the girl calmly when he had to duck to reload, his voice raised over Adrianne’s gunfire. “When your head stops pounding, I want you to pick that gun up and switch on the safety.”
Here, the marksman hesitated mid-crouch, studying Layla with a frown and racing thoughts. It was unlikely that someone would always be around to keep her alive, and entirely possible that she would be put in a situation where she would be forced to defend herself. It was too clear to him that her instincts would not always be sufficient to save her. Mind made up, North returned to the battle, speaking in between shots. “Hang on to it. Use it only if you absolutely need to. Get rid of it as soon as you don’t need it anymore. Unless someone teaches you how to use it properly. Also, you won’t get to tell Adrienne ‘you’re welcome’ later if you go catatonic on her. So keep it together.”
All things considered, it was the best North could do. After all, dealing with feelings (especially little-person-feelings) was really not his forte.
Even as the raging battle between himself, Paige and Amara built into a frenzy of flames and colors, Vance just kept going, forcing his body to respond to what he needed to do. He put the searing pain from some very close calls out of his head and hardened the pink nimbus that surrounded him, forcing flame and blade away, even as he and Paige advanced on the out of control mutate.
Noting her ability to get in close without serious burn damage, Vance was struck by a sudden idea. "Husk!" he called out, glancing a look over towards her before diving aside from a burst of flame from Amara. "Brace yourself for impact, and get ready to do some damage!"
A pink light flared around Paige suddenly as Vance picked her up off the ground. As he pushed himself up to his feet, he clutched the air as if grabbing an invisible ball, and hurled it with all of his force at Amara. At the same time, his pink teke dragged Paige forward, and then hurtled her directly at Amara like the shot out of a cannon.
"Osmium got i-" Paige replied, trying not to let out an undignified squeak as she was thrown. The sheets of her former husk peeled off as she flew, creating a comet tail for the ball she pulled herself into; it was with a strange crack that the two of them collided, and Paige went skittering off to the side, finally resting several meters away.
The blow staggered the mutate, forcing her back and stopping the advance. Flames licked against Paige’s metal form as she slowly got to her feet, ready for rock to meet metal once more.
As the two young woman fought Ororo surveyed the scene from above; the worst of the fires were expiring under the heavy deluge of rain, the battlefield a slick morass of mud and puddled water. The remaining Magistrates did their best to defend their positions but as 'Commander Braddock' and Amara began to falter so did their support, and it seemed for the second time that day that maybe - just maybe - they might actually succeed. We have done our job... let us hope that Jenny and her people have done theirs.
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