Genosha: Onwards To Victory: Close The Blast Doors!

[x-gambit.livejournal.com]

Emma's team causes chaos as they lock down the Citadel.



"More guards ahead." Kyle grunted, wearily. "Can't tell how many but I can hear 'em." The furrows on his face and shoulders from the fight with Laurie were healed, leaving dried blood and newly pink skin, but he still hurt, a lingering consequence of going toe to toe with his friend's powers. "Might be mutates too, who the fuck knows."

ÒPlenty of them,Ó replied Emma, sounding distracted. Keeping an ever-smaller portion of her mind in Kyle and WadeÕs pain centres as they healed from the really quite spectacular injuries imposed on them was not too much of a burden on her telepathy. Sorting through the minds in the Citadel was also not too much of a burden. Hitting the minds of mutates, those strangely shaped warped things that her telepathy skittered across and off like a bug on a windscreen, also wasnÕt all that difficult. Doing them all at the same time was, however, somewhat complicated.

"Awesome," Wade said, tightening a makeshift bandage around his arm where Laurie-But-Not-Laurie's handler had gotten in a lucky hit. "And fuck you, too, Eleanor," he said, because addressing one's healing factor as though it was a completely separate entity was completely normal, obviously. "Left, right, or center?" He asked, tying off the knot with his teeth and a tug of his free hand, then faced forward.

Jubilee pushed at his shoulder, careful of his injury, indicating he go left, then pointed at Kyle to go right. She, Emma and Warren could go up the middle to draw attention.

Emma nodded slightly as Jubilee threw thoughts at her. ÒTheyÕll concentrate the firepower on the centre three,Ó she said. ÒSo we put our heavy hitters on the edges to flank them. IÕll have to go diamond, though.Ó She threw a glance at Kyle and Wade, both of whom nodded in acceptance of the removal of her pain relief.

Warren simply nodded, and started to move. It wasn't long before they were engaged by a group of Magistrates, one of whom quickly found himself disarmed with a crack, a swoop of Warren's wing breaking his wrist in one neat snap. Warren kept himself moving, maneuvering his wings to distract and disarm as many of the defenders as he could.

"I love when he bitchslaps people with the wings." Kyle flashed a grin at Warren, and then at Wade, and went in claws first to a pair of Magistrates. The armor and helmets meant his claws didn't so much but two inch long claws on a man's hands were frankly, intimidating and more so since some were broken off and ragged. He did more striking with elbows and knees than slashing with claws, focused more on knocking the men out than causing pain. Kyle was simply too far past pissed to care about revenge anymore. He just wanted this shit done and over with.

"Know what I'd love?" Wade said, covering Kyle's near-dive at the Magistrates with carefully aimed shots. He was working on keeping a certain number of them back and then letting them funnel in so Kyle and Warren could deal with them on slightly more even footing. The mercenary was also taking some small sort of enjoyment out of keeping count of the number of bodies he was dropping. "Armor piercing rounds. I'd really love some of those." But since he didn't have any, he'd settle for throat-shots. They weren't as easy with an assault rifle, but for every four or so soldiers he kept back, he managed one. It helped to keep him focused and to make sure the opposing forces didn't turn all their attention to his teammates.

Raising his voice, he grinned, the expression sharp, and called, "Since I can't have them, I'll settle for a date with your sister." He pointed the barrel of his gun at a particularly large man who seemed intent on coming at Jubes from her left. "Or your brother - sometimes I'm not picky. Though if either of them look anything like you, I might decide to renegotiate."

Jubilee summoned several dozen sparks from her hands to trace lightly around her body, not an impenetrable bullet proof shield but the best she could do at short notice. Other plasma sparks she sent toward the enemy, a series of bright lights and sudden pain to harrow their vision and break their concentration.

EmmaÕs fighting style was far more defensive under these numbers than was usual, and she could generally only deal with one assailant at a time. Her mind, however, never stopped working and it didnÕt take her that long to see what she wanted. Turning to the left, she ducked backwards behind Jubilee and began to beat her way through a tide of attackers, concentrating on staying away from mutates and their handlers, dotted relatively lightly throughout their assailants. Shrugging the occasional bullet off, she eventually made it to the lockers she had spied at the side of the room and drove her hand through the lock. She made a soft noise of satisfaction at what she found. Catching up the boxes, she turned back, and waited for a momentary break in the fight that raged now, mostly, behind her. ÒWade,Ó she called and threw several boxes of armour piercing rounds to the man, who caught them neatly. ÒAsk and you shall receive. If youÕre going to take on mutates, go for the knees if you can. They didnÕt choose to be here.Ó

Wade had caught the boxes based purely on instinct - allies tossing boxes usually meant good things. When he actually looked at them, a slow grin spread over his lips. "Emma Frost, I am going to write you a motherfucking sonnet when this is all over." Kneeling, he took cover for a moment to check his assault rifle to make sure the bullets were compatible. A very slight modification was required, but it was quick and dirty and once he was done, the bullets slid into place. The chance of them blowing up the barrel was minimal, though it still existed.

Giving the lady a small salute, he started muttering, "I'd like a grenade launcher and some shot guns and a few claymores... definitely the explosives, though the swords were cool, too." After the first shot didn't blow up his rifle, Wade began aiming more carefully, taking down Magistrates with a cool precision that left them facing fewer and fewer of the opposition. He did as asked, though, and only shot the mutates in places that would be exceedingly distracting, not lethal.

By the time the running fight was over, Kyle was bleeding from new fresh wounds, one side of his face nearly bruised and already the purple was fading to an ugly green. As they pushed past the last of the guards to the control room, his limp - a product of being in the wrong place at the wrong time when Wade took a shot that was meant for a Magistrate and grazed Kyle's calf - lessened, and by the time he was driving a knee into the last guard's stomach, it was entirely gone, and his bleeding had stopped, leaving dried blood but otherwise neatly healed wounds.

"Dudes, that is a lot of buttons." He kicked the guard's guns over to Wade, and grinned at the control room. "What ones do we smash to make things no worky?"

"Whatever we do, we're going to have to do it quickly. They know we're here, and it won't take them long at all to send reinforcements." Warren hung back from the controls, keeping an eye out for any incoming. He wasn't likely to be helpful with the controls, but lookout? He was great with that.

Wade listened to Warren as he considered Kyle's question, then lifted his assault rifle, barrel pointed toward the ceiling, and asked, "Can't I just shoot them all?"

"Would that work?" Kyle said, from his new perch on one of the consoles that lined the room. "Does shoot buttons make controls go off so people can't send reinforcements in?" He clambered over, looked at the console from the top down and shrugged. "Lesee. What you guys think if I just start jumping up and down on it? Total chaos?"

"Shooting them will work, if you know the right ones to shoot," said Emma. "The same with jumping up and down. I could use my amazing brain to work out the way the engineering works and what should connect to what, or I can my amazing brain in the other way." She walked over to one of the people who had been working away on the consoles before Wade had casually shot him in the back of the thigh. Emma never needed physical contact to make her telepathy work but sometimes it just seemed the thing to do. If nothing else, her firm hand on the man's shoulder minimised his agonised writhing and, as her diamond form returned to flesh, her firm hand in his brain stopped it completely along with the annoying whimpering. She broke through layers of fairly elementary-level shielding and rummaged, somewhat carelessly, through what she found underneath it. As he had so recently been working frantically to set up the Citadel precisely to keep outside people from breaking in, it didn't take Emma long to find what she need.

"Kyle," she pointed as she released the man, who resumed his whimpering as her pain suppression was taken away. "Please turn those four levers to the right and break them off, that'll close everything we need to have closed. Warren - there's three wires up under that ceiling panel there - once Kyle has finished, if you could find something to cut through them, that'll cut off the power for anyone who might try and open the doors we just closed. Jubilee, if you can light up those two consoles after that's done, that should fry out some of the command loops in all of the computers in this place, which may help some of the other teams. And Wade," she flashed a grin at the mercenary, "if you'd like to finish it all off by shooting all of the things, then our work here is done."