xp_logs | Genosha: Onwards To Victory: Better Living Through Chemistry

Emma's team fights to stop mutate Laurie.

Mutate 42 moved forward in a low, on all fours crouch, her claws already glowing with a thick coating of her power. Her gaze surveyed the battlefield, looking for the first opportunity to follow her handler's orders, before finally resting on the woman with blonde hair. It was with a fantastic leap, clawed hands spread outward, that she launched herself at Emma.

For an instant Emma lashed out with her mind at the shape heading towards her, but her mind skittered across the strangely mis-shaped, but identifiable, surface of the mutate's mind. The telepathic probe was cut off abruptly as Emma changed, shifting into diamond just in time for the clawed hands of the mutant to skid across her surface uselessly. The impact caused Emma to stagger backwards and sideways, which proved to be a useful move as Laurie's momentum pitched the girl to one side and Emma to the other, taking Emma out of range of those claws.

Mutate 42 snarled as she rolled into another crouch, her eyes tracking her enemies as she looked for an easier target then the woman with the diamond skin. She spotted the winged man and the smaller Asian woman almost immediately, the grin the lifted her lips upwards to expose teeth as she used her back legs to launch herself forward again.

Kyle's response was instinctive, and he went to all fours in mid-charge, putting every pound of his weight, every muscle into the tackle he delivered to the mutate. Bald head, purpling skin, skin suit, it didn't matter, he knew who it was, and it didn't matter, because he also knew just what it would take to stop her. He'd been there, he'd lived through that, seeing Rory Campbell as Master and nearly God Himself and he'd have killed for that man until the conditioning had been broken.

He sure as fuck wasn't letting Laurie do the same.

"See, the bitch of it is," Wade said, not caring who might hear even as he ditched his assault rifle - he was out of ammo. "I'd just grow a new heart, so you'd have to keep sending her at me to get it again and again and I'm pretty sure there's some moral somewhere in Greek mythology about how that doesn't really end well for somebody. But that might've been a liver. I'd regrow that, too." Hand-to-hand it would have to be, he supposed. Dehumanizing the mutates might work to keep some form of detachment between the handlers and the mutates themselves, but it also worked in Wade's favor - when he looked at her, he didn't see Laurie.

So it was easy to wait for an opening after Kyle managed to stop that leap mid-air and then go for it. Non-lethal was the order of the day where the mutate was concerned, but everything else was fair game. Even if he could regrow his heart, it'd suck worse than a two dollar whore with black teeth and halitosis.

Mutate 42 dug her claws into the mutant holding her, pumping a pain signal through to the power coating them, making a swipe at the other as he got within range of her foot.

Jubilee followed behind Warren, waiting for an opening to best use her powers against the handler, keeping her eye on the other enemies that seemed to be standing back for now.

Semoko and her men gave them few opportunties as a hail of gunfire forced Jubilee to find cover.

"You're looking pretty now, bitch. How about you come out and we can finish our makeover session?" Semoko jeered as bullets skipped off the concrete and forced Jubilee back further.

"Fucking BITCH." Kyle's growl was definitely not directed at Laurie, though unless you knew him it would be hard to tell. He roared as the claws of the mutate who had once been his friend raked over his face, opening furrows in his cheeks and nose, barely missing an eye, and drove an elbow into her gut. The snap of a rib didn't stop him - if she'd kept fighting after he tackled her full-out, his suspicions were true and they'd given her... well, if not his powers, something sure as fuck like them.

The claw wounds on his face burned, more than when Sabertooth had gutted him, more than when Jan had pumped electricity through him to get Mystique away, more than losing his fingers to an overgrown lizard monster, and Kyle howled, and was thrown off, sliding to a heap to land at Emma's feet.

Wade slid into a slightly different position when Kyle got tossed away, half to keep the mutate from charging forward further but also to give the younger guy a chance to recover. His body processed chemicals of any kind faster than most, but pheromones were slightly different and wherever he'd touched her skin to skin had started tingling - that was usually a bad sign. But he focused on his breathing, his fighting turning more defensive for the moment as his hands flew, blocking claws and elbows.

Emma reached down to Kyle and lifted him almost bodily back to his feet. He shook his head at her concerned look and she knew she wasn't going to be particularly helpful to a man with a healing factor. So she turned, instead, back to the fight between Laurie and Wade. He had gone almost entirely defensive, slapping off a whirl of Laurie's limbs as the girl sought to claw at his chest. With a curse, Emma threw herself at Laurie's back, snapping a diamond arm around the girl's throat, and heaving backwards, trying to cut off her breath.

Warren had maneuvered himself into a position behind Semoko as she'd concentrated on Jubilee, and with one quick swoop, had her off the ground and in the air. She was the key to this battle - take her out, and the rest would scatter. And hopefully - hopefully - they could get Laurie to stand down.

"You're not going to win," Warren said to her, sounding very pleasant. "Why not stand down now, save us all the trouble?"

The response was as pithy and negative as Warren could expect, so he simply flew higher, arms wrapped tight around her chest and arms to stop her from retaliating the best he could.

Blood stung Kyle's eyes and he took a moment to swipe it off his face with the back of one hand before going back into the fight. What the hell had they done to Laurie, to make her fight this long, and this hard? She was getting back up from some of the best he had to offer, and even if he knew he was hurting her, he could see the wounds healing as fast as his own - and faster for some. He kicked, hard, nails digging into the skin suit but not puncturing it, and she was pushed away, but the pain that shot up through Kyle's leg knocked him back, an intense burning and tingling over his nerves that went up the leg and into his groin and stomach and torso, leaving him doubled over, and staggering back.

It had only taken a couple of seconds for Laurie to break Emma's chokehold and send her flying back past the incoming Kyle and send her clattering to the floor. "This is not my world," said Emma, as she rose to her feet again, shaking her head. This was hand-to-hand combat and while Emma was good, she had nothing on the capabilities of Kyle or Wade and now, apparently, Laurie. But there were different ways to bring things to the fight. All Emma had to do was extend the right pair of hands.

Letting diamond slide from her shoulders, Emma reached out with her mind and deep into the cerebral cortexes of Kyle and Wade, sorting through pain responses and mapping them with the microsecond swiftness born of long practice. She sorted the "can survive this level of stress response" to "if I let it go this far, I'll kill them" levels of pain and then shut down all of the former ones, suppressing pain even as it blossomed in Wade and Kyle. She kept delicate mental hands on the deadly levels; she didn't want to have to go that far (and with Wade that was very far indeed) but if necessary, she wanted to keep them in reserve.

Wade fought on and he knew somebody was doing something to him when most of the pain he was feeling seemed to get shunted to the side - not entirely gone, but numbed enough that it didn't debilitate him the way it probably should have. He hadn't been pulling his punches before, but he'd been trying to be careful. The mercenary gave up on that, shutting down the part of his brain that kept trying to pipe up and tell him to back off - this person wasn't his friend, wasn't the person who'd given him his first tour of the mansion. She'd kill him as soon as look at him because somebody else told her to and --

She managed to get a hand on him and he felt that tingling from before, only it got about ten times worse and he didn't really register the spasm in his chest because he couldn't. One moment he was fighting, the next he'd doubled over, stumbling backward as he felt another spasm. One arm curling in, Wade backed away, falling somewhere in Emma's general vicinity.

Heart attack, Wade self-diagnosed, though he was going purely based on his body's reaction as opposed to any feelings he might have experienced. Short of breath, he propped himself up against the wall, reaching for one of his guns. He aimed at the mutate, firearm held in the hand not currently clawed over his heart, and pulled the trigger. Nonfatal, he thought, praying the effects of the heart attack dissipated before everyone in his team went down.

Mutate 42 had been about to try and grapple the mouthy annoying one and gut him when she felt a hideous pain in her left buttock, howling with the shock as she turned to try and figure out where it had come from only to have her leg go out from under her. That was not right, the Mistress would have her head if she let these weak mewling aberrations beat her, there would be pain, and the look of disappointment.

The Mistress was a little busy trying to fight against Warren's hold, but he'd carried heavier than her in his time. But there was little more he could do with her like this, and there was no way he was going to be able to stop her yelling orders at Laurie.

So he dropped her. He'd climbed as high as he could, and simply just let her go, in the heat of moment utterly not caring about what a fall from that height would do to her.

Jubilee glared at the woman on the ground in front of her, uncaring as to whether Warren had broken her legs or not, instead she planned to make broken legs the least of Semoko's issues as she stalked forward, ready to lay down the beating of a lifetime on her foe.

Semoko hadn't really screamed when the flier dropped her, but she hadn't been able to stay completely silent, either. She continued to half-yell orders at Mutate 42 even as she attempted to scrabble backward, away from the woman who approached her. None of her Magistrates remained, only her Mutate - and Mutate 42 was very, very occupied. "I will see you burn," she yelled, forcing herself to stand despite at least one broken leg.

See her burn? Jubilee grinned, not caring at the pain from her cheek bone as she sparked along her arms and formed balls of plasma at her hands. She sent them toward Semoko, holding them close to the woman's face, close enough to cause burns, and just start to dig into her skin but not so close to kill. No, Semoko wouldn't die, dying was too damn good for her. Jubilee wanted her alive, and in horrible pain for a good, long, while.

Catya Semoko didn't mind pain. Pain was what told you that you were still alive. She could smell burning flesh, but adrenaline blunted the worst of it. That slant-eyed mutant bitch couldn't be allowed to just stand there and use her power like that, so Semoko broke into a staggering half-lurching run, clearly favoring her good leg over the broken one. She squeezed off a few shots as she ran, but then she was upon Jubilee, tackling her around the waist and bearing her to the ground.

Jubilee rolled with the charge, using momentum to reverse Semoko's grapple so she ended up on top, one hand pushing the woman to the ground as her other took a firm hold with fingers and thumb around Semoko's voice box. Her eyes were grim as she said the first thing she'd said in weeks, the pain of it ignored for the moment. "Call the mutate off, or I burn your fucking throat to ash, you psychotic little goat fucker."

"Mutate 42..." Semoko began, as if she were about to comply, but then snarled. "KILL THEM ALL!" she howled, trying to bring her pistol up to bear on Jubilee.

Jubilee didn't hesitate, suddenly releasing all the rage she'd held back for this moment, fists clenched and burning with her power as she wailed on Semoko, punch after punch, not stopping even when she stopped fighting back, not stopping till the woman's face was a mess of blood, flesh and the white flash of broken bone beneath her. -

Dulled pain. It had become a distant message, telling him what was injured and broken and what was healing correctly, and what parts were going to heal wrong and need medical intervention. He assessed at he moved; clawed open cheeks and nose, healing, cracked ribs - healing, concussion, healing. Nothing unacceptable. Nothing he could not fight through.

Wildchild met eyes with his opponent and struck, claws slashing across her throat and raking open a wound that bubbled blood down her front, soaking the skinsuit, turning green and gold to dirty red and brown. For a moment he could see into her throat and hear the whistle of her gasping before it closed over, and even while it did, the woman - it was like fighting himself as a woman - struck. Clawed hands, small and precise cleaved his abdomen, puncturing the skinsuit and his flesh and muscle and came back out bloody.

It burned, and he shifted, vomiting and grabbing his gut with one arm, and spun. Even with his forearm tightly pressed against his stomach, he twisted and bent, arm down, legs up, striking one heel into the back of his opponent's head, and then the other into her jaw. He felt the crunch of bone, and the tug and wetness as his claws ripped skin from her face.

By the time he came down and met her eyes again, the wound had begun to sealed, more blood left on his foot than on her face. It continued to shrink in the moment between the women staggering back, and then lunging forward much too fast for him to react properly. He was still assessing - the wound on his stomach had not torn out his intestines, it would not need medical attention. Her teeth sunk into his shoulder, and the clawed hands grabbed at his throat before he could move.

But he was bigger, stronger, and his claws dug deeply into the back of her head and neck. A growl, another and with a roar, he flipped her, over his head and throwing the woman down hard onto her back.

And it still did not stop her as she twisted, kipped up and met his growl with a snarl of her own.

Emma's mind was fully occupied: dampening the pain of Wade's heart attack enough to keep him conscious and capable of self-defence, even as his healing factor kicked in, coping with the new and jagged slashes of agony that she shunted from Kyle's mind as he attacked Laurie and using yet another part of her mind in that of one of the tank drivers. She'd managed to capture him in the chaos surrounding the battle between mutate and mutants and make him turn his guns against his own people, sending them fleeing from armoured rounds and clearing them away effectively enough that ending the battle against Laurie should be enough to see them safe.

"Don't know why I didn't do this before," she muttered to herself even as she shut the tank driver down.

Then her attention was caught by something in Kyle's mind. Pain centres were scattered throughout the mind and the sheer volume of Laurie's attacks meant that Emma was encompassing almost everything that happened in Kyle's mind, right down to the instinctive level. The change in those instincts - a sudden shift from serious fighting to something that felt like a program to murder, was enough to snap her attention to that part of his mind and examine his thoughts sharply.

"Do you know, Kyle," Emma said conversationally, knowing he couldn't hear her, "I don't think that bit belongs to you." She sent her telepathy round the edges of it, a ragged, nearly severed bit of something that felt sharply rotten: a badly bolted on bit of zombie programming. Well past its use-by date, Emma decided. It was killing rage, sheer killing rage, and the overwhelming roil of it, cancelling out Kyle's thoughts and turning him almost to feral, was not going to help when she needed him useful. With a neat twist of a psychic scalpel, Emma sliced off the old programming and then turned her attention back to dampening his pain responses.

Laurie wasn't going to stop, that was clear. Especially not after her handler had ordered her to kill them all. From his bird's eye view he'd taken stock of the battle - Wade slumped against the wall, Jubilee doing things to the woman he'd dropped in her lap he didn't want to think about. Kyle in some kind of feral rage, locked in a ferocious battle with Laurie.

It had to end. It was as simple as that. Warren landed behind the mutate Laurie, and with a deft clip of his wing, knocked her out cold.

Wade watched it all go down from his spot against the wall, only lowering his gun once Warren had taken the mutate out of the equation. In the odd silence that always seemed to fall after violence, when the only real sound was their ragged breathing, the mercenary said, "Good work, team. Well done." He offered all of them a double thumbs up, careful not to accidentally shoot himself, and then continued, "Awesome. Can we get a moment? Tiny one. Real short. Promise."