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xp_logsKurt's team rescues the prisoners from the power plant, and brings it down behind them.
The mutants stood stunned for a moment, before breaking into cheers at Kurt’s announcement. After the speed of the assault, it took them time to realize that they were being freed. For some of them, they had grown accustomed to the idea that they’d die down in the depths of the plant, only to have it rescinded. They had cleared the route to the control room, but two dozen mutants were directionless, trying to figure out where to go.
"Okay, okay, party time temp suspended, folks." Kyle said, waving his arms to try to get the attention of the workers. He glanced at Kurt, almost checking with him silently, and then returned his attention to the workers. "We're gonna be going all ka-boom on this place, so me and greenie here are gonna get your asses outski." He waved at Cammie, who was making the "I keel j00" face at the nickname. "Step one, where are you folks hiding anyone who's been hurt too bad to work?"
A shortish man, missing one hand at the wrist stepped forward. "We have a place, where they store junked equipment. I will show you this place." His voice was rough from disuse and tentative, but he pointed with his good arm.
"Well, let's get fucking moving then," Cammie said, shaking her left arm a bit, "The sooner we get the fuck out of here, the happier I'll be." She was really, really seething at the moment. Not at the nickname Kyle gave her, it was just another nail on the fingerboard of life recently. She was really, really hoped they ran into someone who tried to stop them. She really did.
"Potty mouth." Kyle said, flashing fangs in a too-cheerful grin.
The short man, who shook his his head and refused to give his name when Kyle asked, led them back through the power plant to a corner where Kyle at least could smell sick and infection under the smells of rust and water and metal. After pushing a junked forklift out of the way, it revealed a tiny space, where three mutants lay on pallets that had, as near as they could tell, been made of more junk. Two were older, one with a leg off at the knee that still oozed pus and one struggled to sit up, coughing. The third's face was covered, and the mutant with the missing leg shook her head. "Died." she said.
"Well, we can't take the corpse with us," Cammie said simply. Dead bodies didn't bother her. Not for a very long time, anyway, "So why don't you guys get the other two and let's get the fuck out of here."
"Uh." Kyle wanted to argue that the person who died deserved a burial but he couldn't really see a way to carry the body out, not with two injured people. "Fuck you for being right." He shook off the urge to snarl in Cammie's face and instead crept closer to the two mutants who were injured. "Kyle Gibney." He said, pointing to himself. "That's Cammie. We're gonna get you guys outta here. How badly are you hurt?"
The older woman with the missing leg glanced at the short man who had led them over. "You carry me, he carries the sick one." She said, pushing herself up on her elbows. "He is very strong, I can hold on to you." The short man gave a sort of affirmative grunt, and picked the sickly man up in a cradle-like carry. "I will lead you back out."
Kyle nodded, and jerked a thumb at his back. "Piggy back's easier for me. If we gotta run, you hold on like crazy, okay? I move faster than most folks." Between the two of them, the woman got on Kyle's back, and they picked their way out of the tiny makeshift junk-shelter.
"Can't wait to get the fuck out of here," Cammie muttered, not bothering with being all warm and greeting. There'd be plenty of time for that shit if they made it out of here, and she wasn't the warm and friendly type anyway. At least not with people she didn't know and for good reason. She moved as quickly and quietly as she could, which for a former street-rat thief was pretty good. She had some actual experience with her new job under her belt now too.
"You and me both." Kyle said. "The faster the better." Not to mention that they were on a deadline. Kurt and Angel had plans to make things go boom. "Fastest way outta here?" he asked the short man. "Lets go."
“Firestar, Jubilee”, Kurt said, “I need you to come with me to the control room. Jubilee, you are going to pick locks for us, then get into the safety system, make sure the vent cannot close - and then blow everything up. Make certain no one can undo what you have done, even remotely. And please make that noise stop, while you are at it. After that, Firestar and I will go and destroy the rest.”
Jubilee didn’t bother taking the time to salute, but simply grabbed hold of his hand and tugged him forward, making a ‘hurry up’ gesture with her hands to show she understood. At some stage in the future, she was going to have to learn some kind of sign language, just in case this happened again.
Kurt squeezed her hand quickly in acknowledgment, hurrying along behind her with occasional pauses for her to open doors, until the trio reached the control room - and then he just stood back and watched her work, in between scoping out the intake chamber he could see through a small window.
Jubilee looked around as she entered the room, spotting the most likely hacking opportunity immediately as she pressed a button and pulled out the recessed server keyboard and monitor. Working through the first set of hacks Doug had taught her, she swore as none of them worked. Obviously whoever had created the system had at least some idea about security and hadn’t used any of the more regular backdoors or passwords.
Which meant she would have to get tricky and use the less used skills Doug had taught her, and frankly she wished Doug were here right now, even with the awkwardness that still happened whenever she was in the room with him because frankly, while she was sure she could do this, Doug would’ve been done by now and there was a time limit to how long they could stay in one place and not get caught.
Several minutes later...
Jubilee did a dance of glee and turned a shit-eating grin on Kurt before making a big thumbs up signal. It had been basically the very last hack she’d tried out of her somewhat limited knowledge, and she made a note to herself to hassle Doug into teaching her more, but she’d finally managed to crack the security and set a series of viruses into the systems, as well as turning off the ever present alarm.
Kurt grinned at Jubilee broadly, returning the thumbs up gesture a little more clumsily with his broader hand, then waved it towards the door. “Excellent work, Jubilee. Time for you to go while there is still a way out, I will see you on the surface.” He watched her nod and run for the door, then turned to Angel. “Now, Firestar, come with me”, extending a hand to her.
“We are going into the intake chamber - and there, now everyone else is safely out, you will have my express permission.”
Kyle, Cammie and their guide had taken a different route than they'd come in, through a hallway with emergency doors still hanging open and past what looked like a secured area that had been emptied when the guards had met them on their way into the plant.
Kyle barely heard the whisper and click of a safety being taken off a gun. He had just enough time to bark out a "Fuck! Pull back!" before gunfire rang out, and he ran back a few yards, only to see the short man and his cargo go down both bleeding from headwounds. "Fuck. FUCK." He swore. The woman he'd been carrying simply let go, sliding off Kyle's back and crawling to sit against the wall, wincing in pain from her drop but clearly understanding that she could not be carried if they had to fight.
"God fucking damnit," Cammie swore, taking cover against the wall for a moment. Ideally she wouldn't get shot, though her blood would do just as much damage to their attackers as it would to her from fumes alone, it would also take out Kyle and the one person left. She was going to do what she had to do to get them out of there. After all, Kyle was a decent guy, he shouldn't be the one pulling the proverbial trigger.
Besides it was time for some payback.
"Word." Kyle glanced at Cammie and nudged his head towards the area where he could hear the guards. It had been only single shots, the guards had pistols, not automatic weapons, and he couldn't smell enough "gun" to indicate they had backup weapons. He pointed to himself, and held up two fingers, and then at her, and held up three, and then dropped to all fours. Fuck looking human, the guards didn't think he was human. After the nod from Cammie indicating she understood, he ducked his head, and moved inhumanly fast back the way they'd come.
She got the idea all right. Once he had their attention she side stepped out of hiding and came up behind them. She grabbed one by the neck, and he was dead a second later, choking on the vomit that was damn near an involuntary reaction to what she did. The other turned at the sound and the smell and she grabbed him by the face and did the same thing to him, dropping him a second later. Dead, but twitching. Sometimes they did that. It wouldn't last very long, muscle convolutions never did.
Kyle's forward momentum carried him well past the guards, with only one of them managing to even come close to shooting him, a light graze across his hip that only stung. He was much more interested in the choking smell of pesticides and poison and vomit and he spun to see the last man twitch a few times, void his bowels and bladder and then stop moving. "What the -fuck?!" He snapped. "That wasn't "follow me, murder people! That was follow me, knock dudes out!"
Cammie shot him a dry look, "Yeah, because when they wake up they'll totally see the error of their ways and stop fucking shooting people," Cammie shot back, "Then we can all have tea parties and talk about how great of a time this was. Look, you don't have to eviscerate people, but I'm not going to leave some asshole to sound the alarm and shoot us in the fucking back."
This was what she was made for. And at the moment, she was almost thankful.
"Warn me next time." Kyle growled out. They really didn't have time for this fight, and he wasn't going to admit she had a point, but she probably did. Maybe. Kinda. He stepped way around two of the corpses, and bent to close the eyes of the two mutates they couldn't rescue. They didn't have time to bring the bodies out. Fuck. "And fuck you for being right. Just for that, you get to hit the fire alarms and get purple dye all over you." He jogged back to their remaining rescue and bent to pick her up gently. "Hold on, because we're gonna run right the fuck out of here." he told her.
"Sure, whatever you say," Cammie said. She didn't really mind it. It wouldn't be the first time, "Let's just get the fuck out of here. I'm not actually all that kill happy. More bodies we leave is more bodies for them to find." And she wasn't eager to be found at all.
"Yeah, not if Angel and Kurt have their way. Big kaboom." Kyle said, breaking into a fast jog. "No talking Jubes into hitting the alarm, neither."
As if summoned by those very words Jubilee rounded the corner at a dead run and almost ended up mowing them down, it was only through judicious use of walls that she managed to not do so.
She gestured at them to follow her and took off again, not bothering to see if they understood. She figured they'd either work it out or find their own way.
"There you are," Cammie said, running on up to the other girl, "Ready to pull that fucking alarm?"
Kyle just kept going, after the two women slowed to hit every fire alarm, emergency button and thing that looked like it might possibly make a fucking lot of noise. They could catch up, his ears were ringing already. Ow.
Angel’s fingers were practically itching as she reached out, taking the hand Kurt had offered her. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment to prepare herself for what was about to happen.
When she opened her eyes again, seconds later, they were standing on a ledge against the wall of the intake chamber. “I must leave you here to do your part”, he told her. “Give it everything you have, then get to safety and I will come back for you.”
“Got it.”
Observant eyes swept around the intake chamber, and Angel curled and uncurled her fingers a couple of times before raising herself into the air, moving towards the middle of the chamber. The air around her heated up, igniting in a funnel of blue flames that surrounded her. Heat rolled off her body in waves, feeding the flames, and finally Angel extended her arms, sending the flames barrelling off in all directions. The explosion reverberated, shockwaves kicking the turbines into overdrive, and they began to shake, unable to feed the excess energy into the vents.
Angel quickly put up a shield, her eyes shifting around and finding a side tube that would have to serve as shelter until Kurt got her out. She flew over quickly, dodging out of the way of a piece of debris that had already fallen loose and taking refuge in the tube, keeping her shield strong and ignoring the protesting exhaustion.
Kurt had been watching through the window in the control room, and moved the moment he saw where Angel had gone. Just as the plant began to implode completely, he appeared at her side and grabbed her arm, and then they vanished.
The mutants stood stunned for a moment, before breaking into cheers at Kurt’s announcement. After the speed of the assault, it took them time to realize that they were being freed. For some of them, they had grown accustomed to the idea that they’d die down in the depths of the plant, only to have it rescinded. They had cleared the route to the control room, but two dozen mutants were directionless, trying to figure out where to go.
"Okay, okay, party time temp suspended, folks." Kyle said, waving his arms to try to get the attention of the workers. He glanced at Kurt, almost checking with him silently, and then returned his attention to the workers. "We're gonna be going all ka-boom on this place, so me and greenie here are gonna get your asses outski." He waved at Cammie, who was making the "I keel j00" face at the nickname. "Step one, where are you folks hiding anyone who's been hurt too bad to work?"
A shortish man, missing one hand at the wrist stepped forward. "We have a place, where they store junked equipment. I will show you this place." His voice was rough from disuse and tentative, but he pointed with his good arm.
"Well, let's get fucking moving then," Cammie said, shaking her left arm a bit, "The sooner we get the fuck out of here, the happier I'll be." She was really, really seething at the moment. Not at the nickname Kyle gave her, it was just another nail on the fingerboard of life recently. She was really, really hoped they ran into someone who tried to stop them. She really did.
"Potty mouth." Kyle said, flashing fangs in a too-cheerful grin.
The short man, who shook his his head and refused to give his name when Kyle asked, led them back through the power plant to a corner where Kyle at least could smell sick and infection under the smells of rust and water and metal. After pushing a junked forklift out of the way, it revealed a tiny space, where three mutants lay on pallets that had, as near as they could tell, been made of more junk. Two were older, one with a leg off at the knee that still oozed pus and one struggled to sit up, coughing. The third's face was covered, and the mutant with the missing leg shook her head. "Died." she said.
"Well, we can't take the corpse with us," Cammie said simply. Dead bodies didn't bother her. Not for a very long time, anyway, "So why don't you guys get the other two and let's get the fuck out of here."
"Uh." Kyle wanted to argue that the person who died deserved a burial but he couldn't really see a way to carry the body out, not with two injured people. "Fuck you for being right." He shook off the urge to snarl in Cammie's face and instead crept closer to the two mutants who were injured. "Kyle Gibney." He said, pointing to himself. "That's Cammie. We're gonna get you guys outta here. How badly are you hurt?"
The older woman with the missing leg glanced at the short man who had led them over. "You carry me, he carries the sick one." She said, pushing herself up on her elbows. "He is very strong, I can hold on to you." The short man gave a sort of affirmative grunt, and picked the sickly man up in a cradle-like carry. "I will lead you back out."
Kyle nodded, and jerked a thumb at his back. "Piggy back's easier for me. If we gotta run, you hold on like crazy, okay? I move faster than most folks." Between the two of them, the woman got on Kyle's back, and they picked their way out of the tiny makeshift junk-shelter.
"Can't wait to get the fuck out of here," Cammie muttered, not bothering with being all warm and greeting. There'd be plenty of time for that shit if they made it out of here, and she wasn't the warm and friendly type anyway. At least not with people she didn't know and for good reason. She moved as quickly and quietly as she could, which for a former street-rat thief was pretty good. She had some actual experience with her new job under her belt now too.
"You and me both." Kyle said. "The faster the better." Not to mention that they were on a deadline. Kurt and Angel had plans to make things go boom. "Fastest way outta here?" he asked the short man. "Lets go."
“Firestar, Jubilee”, Kurt said, “I need you to come with me to the control room. Jubilee, you are going to pick locks for us, then get into the safety system, make sure the vent cannot close - and then blow everything up. Make certain no one can undo what you have done, even remotely. And please make that noise stop, while you are at it. After that, Firestar and I will go and destroy the rest.”
Jubilee didn’t bother taking the time to salute, but simply grabbed hold of his hand and tugged him forward, making a ‘hurry up’ gesture with her hands to show she understood. At some stage in the future, she was going to have to learn some kind of sign language, just in case this happened again.
Kurt squeezed her hand quickly in acknowledgment, hurrying along behind her with occasional pauses for her to open doors, until the trio reached the control room - and then he just stood back and watched her work, in between scoping out the intake chamber he could see through a small window.
Jubilee looked around as she entered the room, spotting the most likely hacking opportunity immediately as she pressed a button and pulled out the recessed server keyboard and monitor. Working through the first set of hacks Doug had taught her, she swore as none of them worked. Obviously whoever had created the system had at least some idea about security and hadn’t used any of the more regular backdoors or passwords.
Which meant she would have to get tricky and use the less used skills Doug had taught her, and frankly she wished Doug were here right now, even with the awkwardness that still happened whenever she was in the room with him because frankly, while she was sure she could do this, Doug would’ve been done by now and there was a time limit to how long they could stay in one place and not get caught.
Several minutes later...
Jubilee did a dance of glee and turned a shit-eating grin on Kurt before making a big thumbs up signal. It had been basically the very last hack she’d tried out of her somewhat limited knowledge, and she made a note to herself to hassle Doug into teaching her more, but she’d finally managed to crack the security and set a series of viruses into the systems, as well as turning off the ever present alarm.
Kurt grinned at Jubilee broadly, returning the thumbs up gesture a little more clumsily with his broader hand, then waved it towards the door. “Excellent work, Jubilee. Time for you to go while there is still a way out, I will see you on the surface.” He watched her nod and run for the door, then turned to Angel. “Now, Firestar, come with me”, extending a hand to her.
“We are going into the intake chamber - and there, now everyone else is safely out, you will have my express permission.”
Kyle, Cammie and their guide had taken a different route than they'd come in, through a hallway with emergency doors still hanging open and past what looked like a secured area that had been emptied when the guards had met them on their way into the plant.
Kyle barely heard the whisper and click of a safety being taken off a gun. He had just enough time to bark out a "Fuck! Pull back!" before gunfire rang out, and he ran back a few yards, only to see the short man and his cargo go down both bleeding from headwounds. "Fuck. FUCK." He swore. The woman he'd been carrying simply let go, sliding off Kyle's back and crawling to sit against the wall, wincing in pain from her drop but clearly understanding that she could not be carried if they had to fight.
"God fucking damnit," Cammie swore, taking cover against the wall for a moment. Ideally she wouldn't get shot, though her blood would do just as much damage to their attackers as it would to her from fumes alone, it would also take out Kyle and the one person left. She was going to do what she had to do to get them out of there. After all, Kyle was a decent guy, he shouldn't be the one pulling the proverbial trigger.
Besides it was time for some payback.
"Word." Kyle glanced at Cammie and nudged his head towards the area where he could hear the guards. It had been only single shots, the guards had pistols, not automatic weapons, and he couldn't smell enough "gun" to indicate they had backup weapons. He pointed to himself, and held up two fingers, and then at her, and held up three, and then dropped to all fours. Fuck looking human, the guards didn't think he was human. After the nod from Cammie indicating she understood, he ducked his head, and moved inhumanly fast back the way they'd come.
She got the idea all right. Once he had their attention she side stepped out of hiding and came up behind them. She grabbed one by the neck, and he was dead a second later, choking on the vomit that was damn near an involuntary reaction to what she did. The other turned at the sound and the smell and she grabbed him by the face and did the same thing to him, dropping him a second later. Dead, but twitching. Sometimes they did that. It wouldn't last very long, muscle convolutions never did.
Kyle's forward momentum carried him well past the guards, with only one of them managing to even come close to shooting him, a light graze across his hip that only stung. He was much more interested in the choking smell of pesticides and poison and vomit and he spun to see the last man twitch a few times, void his bowels and bladder and then stop moving. "What the -fuck?!" He snapped. "That wasn't "follow me, murder people! That was follow me, knock dudes out!"
Cammie shot him a dry look, "Yeah, because when they wake up they'll totally see the error of their ways and stop fucking shooting people," Cammie shot back, "Then we can all have tea parties and talk about how great of a time this was. Look, you don't have to eviscerate people, but I'm not going to leave some asshole to sound the alarm and shoot us in the fucking back."
This was what she was made for. And at the moment, she was almost thankful.
"Warn me next time." Kyle growled out. They really didn't have time for this fight, and he wasn't going to admit she had a point, but she probably did. Maybe. Kinda. He stepped way around two of the corpses, and bent to close the eyes of the two mutates they couldn't rescue. They didn't have time to bring the bodies out. Fuck. "And fuck you for being right. Just for that, you get to hit the fire alarms and get purple dye all over you." He jogged back to their remaining rescue and bent to pick her up gently. "Hold on, because we're gonna run right the fuck out of here." he told her.
"Sure, whatever you say," Cammie said. She didn't really mind it. It wouldn't be the first time, "Let's just get the fuck out of here. I'm not actually all that kill happy. More bodies we leave is more bodies for them to find." And she wasn't eager to be found at all.
"Yeah, not if Angel and Kurt have their way. Big kaboom." Kyle said, breaking into a fast jog. "No talking Jubes into hitting the alarm, neither."
As if summoned by those very words Jubilee rounded the corner at a dead run and almost ended up mowing them down, it was only through judicious use of walls that she managed to not do so.
She gestured at them to follow her and took off again, not bothering to see if they understood. She figured they'd either work it out or find their own way.
"There you are," Cammie said, running on up to the other girl, "Ready to pull that fucking alarm?"
Kyle just kept going, after the two women slowed to hit every fire alarm, emergency button and thing that looked like it might possibly make a fucking lot of noise. They could catch up, his ears were ringing already. Ow.
Angel’s fingers were practically itching as she reached out, taking the hand Kurt had offered her. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment to prepare herself for what was about to happen.
When she opened her eyes again, seconds later, they were standing on a ledge against the wall of the intake chamber. “I must leave you here to do your part”, he told her. “Give it everything you have, then get to safety and I will come back for you.”
“Got it.”
Observant eyes swept around the intake chamber, and Angel curled and uncurled her fingers a couple of times before raising herself into the air, moving towards the middle of the chamber. The air around her heated up, igniting in a funnel of blue flames that surrounded her. Heat rolled off her body in waves, feeding the flames, and finally Angel extended her arms, sending the flames barrelling off in all directions. The explosion reverberated, shockwaves kicking the turbines into overdrive, and they began to shake, unable to feed the excess energy into the vents.
Angel quickly put up a shield, her eyes shifting around and finding a side tube that would have to serve as shelter until Kurt got her out. She flew over quickly, dodging out of the way of a piece of debris that had already fallen loose and taking refuge in the tube, keeping her shield strong and ignoring the protesting exhaustion.
Kurt had been watching through the window in the control room, and moved the moment he saw where Angel had gone. Just as the plant began to implode completely, he appeared at her side and grabbed her arm, and then they vanished.
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