xp_logs | Genosha - In The Balance: Fractured

Captured, the prisoners are brought together. Contempt and contention and blame - whose fault is it that the escape attempt failed?

Scott stumbled as the magistrates pushed their prisoners into the common room. He righted himself, rubbing his wrists where the guards grip had cut off his circulation. He quickly glanced around, counting the prisoners in the room before releasing a small sigh of relief. All of the remaining escapees were still here, along with those who had remained behind. Scott tried his best to keep his face cold and calm as the two groups converged.

Marie-Ange's wrists were still zip-tied together in front of her, clearly the guards did not appreciate her attempt to escape, but otherwise she seemed calm and unruffled, the only sign of her distress the persistent head toss to get her hair out of her face. Her eyes passed over most of the others, staying briefly on Amanda before flicking away, and she turned her face away from her friend to focus on the far wall.

Jim made no comment to the others as the guards released him. Instead he turned to the quartet who had remained behind. "You guys okay?" he asked, relief clear in his voice. "Did they hurt you?"

Clarice laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. "I'm just dandy!" she chirped. She was going to kill someone, though probably not literally. She was angry at the situation, at herself, at just...everything. And not holding it together well at all. She looked around the room at everyone else. "Nice to see everyone again."

Scott looked at Clarice with a mixture of alarm and concern, "I'm glad to see we all managed to make it though this unharmed. Well most of us, anyway" he corrected himself sadly.

"They took Sarah for the mutate process." The words were harsh, Amanda's voice rough with emotion. The witch herself was huddled against the wall, arms wrapped around herself. "She attacked Remy and they decided she was too dangerous. So they've taken her to that fucking machine of theirs." Her eyes slid over to Marie-Ange, burning with anger. "He set us up."

"Of course he did." Marie-Ange said, between gritted teeth. "This was too easy. We should have known this plan would not work, all of us." She glanced up at the ceiling, mouthed... something.... and shook her head again. "He deserves whatever he gets."

"They're going to kill him!" Amanda blurted out. "Thanks to you, they know he's Gambit, and that's an automatic fucking death sentence. Not to mention it means all our claiming we're not terrorists has just gone out the bloody window! Who's going to believe us now?"

Clarice groaned. She couldn't argue with the facts, which Amanda had so succinctly put it. There was an argument for one death meaning the betterment of the group, but she was pretty sure that was just a load of shit right now, "He's like a cat," Clarice said, trying to calm Amanda down at least a little, "He's not going to go down without a fight. None of us are. So he's Gambit. He didn't earn his rep without you know, being the toughest, hardest to kill person ever," these couldn't be the first people after him. "Not that ratting him out helped," she side-eyed Marie-Ange.

"And Remy ratting out our plans was so useful too," Scott shot back rallying to support Marie-Ange. "If he hadn't turned on us then we might have been out of here by now, instead we're stuck here." Scott took a steadying breath and glanced at the guards who were still watching the prisoners like hawks, "it happened, it's in the past and we can't do anything about it. I guess we just have to make the best of what we have left." As he finished speaking Scott turned away from the group, clearly unwilling to say anything else for fear of losing his temper and saying something he would regret.

Jim turned away from his worried regard of Doug, Terry and the battered Korvus. "It was long shot anyway," he pointed out. "With this many people -- we couldn't reasonably believe it'd go off perfectly. We're all human. Remy didn't help, but when they caught us we were already down four people. We were never getting out of this together."

Amanda, Marie-Ange, Doug and Clarice failed to reach any sort of understanding.

Amanda watched Scott turn away before turning back to Marie-Ange. "Of all the things you could have told them," she said, glaring at her friend. "You had to tell them about Gambit? You want Remy's job that badly?"

"He sold us out. You knew he would, and you are yelling at me?" Marie-Ange said, voice practically flat. "You know very well how this works, it was me or him, and Remy would have done the very same thing!"

"At least one of us would've been out!" Amanda retorted. "Now he's on fucking death row, Sarah's getting her brain sucked out of her head and the rest of us are associated with Interpol's Most Wanted!"

"Oh please," Clarice rolled her eyes, "Like you didn't know that was a possibility before you chose sides." Really, this was stupid.

"Shut up, you stupid cow." Marie-Ange's head whipped around to face Clarice. "If you were not such an outstanding coward, we would have never had this problem. At least none of us cried ourselves dry every night!" She rolled her eyes and then turned back to Amanda. "And they knew we were associated with him from the beginning. They would have found out eventually, at least now we are not protecting a serial murderer!"

"A la verrga," Doug grunted. At least with his power gone he could still swear in Spanish. English just didn't have the same...visceralness to its curses. "And you were the one that held us back," he threw at Clarice on the heels of Marie-Ange. "Oh, I can't...I can't..." he repeated in a mocking, overly simpering manner, clutching at his cheeks while his eyes glared daggers at her.

Glaring right back, Clarice crossed her arms over her chest, "Fuck you," she stated, turning away and stalking off.

"You're one to talk!" Amanda jumped in, defending the departing X-Man. "I'm surprised you didn't bloody well hand us over instead of Remy. You're got the track record for it and all!"

"Are you so sure he did not?" Marie-Ange said, strangely calmly for someone who was rolling her wrists around to examine the zipties on them. She jerked her head towards Doug. "One person giving us up, perhaps they would seek confirmation. I would have." She pulled her wrists up to her mouth, bit the zip tie, and then jerked them down hard against her leg, popping the plastic and then shaking out her wrists and rubbing them where they were chafed. "So very protective of us, right up until he has to save himself, no?"

Korvus fails to get his nose fixed. Clarice gets a lecture.

Annoyed, Clarice decided that the best course of action (other than hitting people in the nose), would be to remove herself from it. And possibly sulk. Not the most mature response, she knew that, but well....she wasn't really her best right now. In fact, on a scale of 1-100, she was probably about a -3. That she could recognize this was fairly impressive in and of itself.

Going over to Korvus, she flopped. "Bite me," she stated.

Korvus raised his head from the table. He had been using the cold metal to relieve some of the throbbing in his broken nose. "I suspect that to be another idiom I do not understand. Should I be flattered or offended?"

Pausing a moment to consider, she shrugged, "Your choice," She said, sitting down and without asking, began to examine his nose. "Want me to fix that for you?" she asked. She couldn't heal it, but she could at least reset it.

"Given the lack of consideration you just showed in not explaining your idiom, I do not. I am also leaving my nose in its broken state in order to track how long it will take for us to begin receiving obviously necessary medical treatment." Korvus laid his face back on the table, dismissive of Clarice's presence.

"I wouldn't hold my breathe waiting for that" Scott commented as he approached the two sitting mutants. "What was that about?: he asked Clarice, nodding at the group around Marie-Ange and Doug which she had just left.

Clarice shrugged, she thought that Korvus was acting like an idiot, but she wasn't going to argue it. He could be an idiot if he wanted to be. "Without my powers, I'm a liability. I said I'd stay here. They said I'm a coward," she didn't want to say that she'd told everything in her interrogation.

"And you thought that getting into it with them was a good idea?" Scott threw up his hands in exasperation, "Seriously, what were you thinking? You know what they're like. I'm disappointed in you, Clarice."

Haller tries and fails to talk to Scott.

"Cyclops." A hand fell on Scott's shoulder. It was Jim, his face worried. He flicked his eyes towards Korvus and Clarice before returning them to Scott's one. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

Scott shot a sour look at Clarice and Korvus, a look laden with the promise that this discussion wasn't over. Taking a deep breath he nodded, "Sure." he agreed as he stood up and followed Haller away from the two younger mutants.

Once they were a reasonable distance away Jim stopped them. He gave one of the watching guards an uneasy glance, but continued anyway.

"Don't be so hard on them," said the telepath, gesturing towards the younger members. "They've been through a lot. There's only so much you can expect from people who are hurt and tired. I mean, Korvus isn't even a trainee."

"It's all of our lives on the line," Scott retorted. "We've all been through the ringer, but picking fights isn't going to help anyone. Clarice should have known better, even if Korvus didn't."

"Not everyone can just power through things," the younger man countered. He sighed and spread his hands. "Look, just ... give a little here, okay? When you get something in your head -- if it's a mission that's great, but personal is different. You can't get through that sort of thing by just pushing forward and ignoring all the underlying problems. Look what keeps happening with you and Jea--"

The telepath's eyes widened, and Jim cut the comment short. But it was too late.

Scott sucked in a quick breath and span to stare at Haller, his hands clenching into fists at his side. "You..." he ground out, his voice taught with shock. "Leave her out of this," he warned Haller. "She has nothing to do with this, our...problems have never put peoples lives in danger."

"Scott, I'm sorry but ... they did." Jim crushed a hand to his face, mouth twisting. "When she left the Annex because of ... everything ... she was vulnerable. Emotionally vulnerable, because she was afraid of how you'd react. So Matthews ... it left him an opening, and he took it. He latched on to all that fear and alienation and used it to entrench himself in her mind. And everyone paid for it."

With a hard swallow Jim forced his hand down so he could again meet Scott's eye. "I don't know if you being there would have prevented it," he said, "but if she hadn't been so afraid you would just try to ... . push through things ... then at least when Matthews got ahold of her, maybe she'd at least have felt like she had something left to hold on to."

Scott's fists clenched even tighter, if that was possible, and he stepped closer to Haller anger clearly written across his features. "I...I can't believe you'd even think that. I didn't know about it, I would have given anything to have kept her from going through that." His eyes narrowed, "If you want to talk about endangering people through your relationships let's do that. Who was the one who abandoned his teammates and threw everything away just because he caught sight of his girlfriend? Who is working for the bad guys here, I might add. You may believe that I left Jean vulnerable, but you flat out attacked her!"

As he spoke Scott's fists had crept up, clearly signaling his desire to punch Haller. However sucking in a deep breath Scott visibly managed to restrain himself. "Whatever you might think, I'd say powering through your issues turns out better than letting them control you" he shot at Haller.

Jim flushed red. "You're right," he said, very quietly, "my issues do control me. They even have their own damn names. But at least when someone important needs me I don't just let them run away."

"No?" Scott asked acerbically. "Instead you don't even know that they've been taken to Africa and are actually working against all your friends. That's so much better. At least I knew where she was and was there when if she wanted to talk to me."

For an instant the younger man looked like he was about to retort. His jaw clenched, a muscle working. Then, slowly, he forced his muscles to loosen.

"I think we should ... walk away now," he said, eyes dropping from Scott's.

Scott didn't say anything in reply, he just turned his back on Haller and walked away slowly. Every fiber of his body exuded an aura of anger as his gave swept across the room taking in the broken appearence of the remaining prisoners.

Doug reveals a secret.

Doug's lip curled as he looked at his two teammates. Right now, he might as well put air quotes around the word, because with the way the two of them were jumping all over him... "Right, Doug's the traitor, it's all Doug's fault, blame Doug, blah blah blah."

He turned a withering gaze on Marie-Ange, face full of nothing but contempt for his ex-girlfriend. "Which one of us just showed her soft underbelly the minute we were put in here? Not me. Which one of us was the good little Catholic schoolgirl and got rewarded with her rosary? Not me." He leaned in closer. "Hoping that if you're a proper little princess, that your prince will come in and rescue you from the tower?" He snorted. "Wade's -dead-." He said it flatly and harshly. "And you just gave up the one man who might have still felt enough to come in after you."

Whatever Marie-Ange had intended to say was gone, replaced by incomprehensible French and a tight punch straight at Doug's face.

The punch shocked Doug completely, and he rocked backward a step as he saw stars. Then he lunged forward, fist cocked back to return the blow, and then some. But before the blow could land, an arm came up under Doug's, the inside of their elbow curled against the inside of his and hauling back hard to prevent him from lashing out.

Doug struggled several times against the person holding him back, rolling his shoulder forward and trying to break free. His clenched fist described several small circles over his chest as he strained. After one final lunge, he straightened up, as if accepting that it wasn't to be. His hand slowly opened, and he moved his arm outward and away, now able to break the loosening grip as he chopped sharply downward.

As he continued to glare at Marie-Ange, he brought his hand up towards his face, two fingers spread as he probed his nose and eye socket to see if anything had been broken. When he was satisfied, he brushed both hands sharply down his prison jumpsuit where it had bunched during the struggle. Only then did he finally break his death glare away and turn to see who had stopped him.

Jim released the younger man, but slowly, in case another lunge was forthcoming. "Both of you, stop it," he snapped, letting Doug push away. He kept one hand on Doug's shoulder to make sure he didn't go anywhere as he turned to the furious Frenchwoman. "Do any of us need to be more injured?"

"Whatever." Marie-Ange refused to meet eyes with Doug, or Haller and turned away before the approaching guard could pull her off.

Everyone gets a piece of Clarice, and Amanda loses it, right into Lex.

Tabitha took Scott's place, worry wrinkling her forehead. "Hey, that looked a little rough. Are you okay?"

Clarice rolled her eyes. She did not need to get into it with anyone else right now. "Oh, just peachy," she replied sarcastically. She loved thinking she was a coward, having her so-called friends hate her and then get lectured by someone she respected for pissing the others off. Oh yeah, just great. "You wanna get out of my grill now, trailer park?" Was it rude? Yes. Did she care? No.

She jumped to her feet. "What the hell, Clarice? Are you trying to pick a fight? Because I can oblige." She changed her mind, decided to make the first move. Tabitha grabbed Clarice by the hair.

Shrieking, Clarice slapped Tabitha across the face, "Bring it," she agreed. It was on like Donkey Kong!

Terry flinched at the slap, almost as if she had been struck herself. She could not hear what had actually been said, though the rising tension was visible, and not just between Clarice and Tabitha. She hesitated at the table with a moment's consideration of trying to insert herself into the fight, then simply pushed away from the table and out of the line of fire (or fists) instead.

Lex stood forward and shouted, "What the fuck are you doing?" He tried to separate the two women, but found it almost impossible to approach them. They had devolved into a mindless frenzy and he didn't have the strength to walk into that. "Would you quit acting like children and get your heads out of your asses? This is not helping anyone."

"Typical leather brigade, always telling people what to do," Amanda jeered. "Always sticking your noses in."

He snapped his attention to Amanda as she spoke, more out of instinct than anything else. "And you'd have them beat one another senseless when we're behind enemy lines. No wonder you're part of the fucking X-Force. They just point you at a target and you go and kill it or retrieve it, whatever your precious Remy wants you to do." He snarled with an intense loathing, "Just. Like. A. Good. Bitch."

Amanda's eyes narrowed and her face went cold and still. "Oh, I'm a bitch, all right," she replied, softly, just before she rammed her knee into Lex's groin. "And you just got on my wrong side, sunshine."

He crumbled to the ground with a gasp. That was probably not the most diplomatic thing to say, oh well. Lex could feel tears in his eyes as the pain struck deep into his stomach, she hadn't held back one damn bit. He fought to say something, retaliate in any way, but decided against it. Either he'd get injured, or he'd be forced to take her down and both ways they'd have one more injury to slow them down and keep them from getting the hell out of this place.

It was amazing how years of hand to hand combat training had gone out the window as she and Tabitha fought. Really, the only thing they hadn't done was try to tear out each others weaves, but otherwise it was straight up grade-school. And besides, all intelligent men knew never to break up a cat fight like this, lest they get a knee to the balls. It didn't matter who gave it.

Tabs made an angry-sounding shriek as she yanked on Clarice's hair. She slapped and pinched and yanked on clothes. It was very undignified.

"That's enough." Wittcombe's voice dominated the noise in the yard. "There is not going to be a brawl in my yard. Guards, get them back to their cells."

The guards moved over, separating and securing them, all the while talking about the fight. "Too bad the Warden didn't let the blonde and the purple bitch go a little longer."

"Yeah. I'm not sure why you assholes want to beat each other up. It's not like you'd not going to keep getting the shit kicked out of you. Move."

They made their way to the elevators back down to the cellblock. Wittcombe watched them go, and one of the block commanders approached him.

"Any punishments for the fight, sir?"

"No. All that would do is give them a reason for solidarity. Right now, they're broken as a group. We'd like to keep them that way."