Genosha: The Dawn of Liberation: A Muse of Fire

[x-gambit.livejournal.com]

With the desperate battle now high above the city, the mutants make their last stand to defeat Moreau.



Moreau’s scrabbling climb up the central shaft had given them the opportunity to run, but none of them had taken it. Moreau was too dangerous to retreat from. To do so would be to hand Genosha over to genocide at the hands of the monster. Following him with service elevators and stairs, a knot of mutants reached his new position – a hanger in the uppermost part of the Citadel, where he had already shredded a fighter jet and begun to incorporate the steel and electronics into his robot form to make repairs. As they approached, a pair of mini-guns reversed, and they were forced to dive for cover as the area around them was bathed in a fusillade of bullets.

“Following me, little mutants? Still holding out hope you can win?” He snarled. “I’m going to make you watch as I split the little blonde cunt in two. Slowly. Then maybe the dark haired slut for dessert.” Two more mini-guns came up, directing withering fire on them.

Scott's eyes narrowed in anger, "I'll never let that happen," he shot back at Moreau as he poked his head around the edge of the cover and unleashed a quick optical blast at the monster quickly pulling his head back before he was hit by a barrage of bullets. "We need to take out those guns," he said quietly to the others as the rain of bullets chipped away at their cover.

"And we need cover that won't eventually get punctured by all those damn bullets," Wade muttered, more to himself than anyone else. Under fire like that, even metal sheets would give eventually. Since moving wasn't exactly an option right that minute, though, he decided to go for something a little more direct. "Tell you what," he said a little louder. "Gotta respect the Genoshan love of grenades." He'd found another supply of them and restocked. "Fire in the hole.” Pulling two from the pouches at his waist, he jerked the pins out and stood just long enough to chuck them at Moreau before ducking out of sight again.

Adrienne had dived behind a stash of crates in the corner and, while Wade's grenades hit Moreau, put her unburned hand on them to see what was inside. "Ooo, shiny," she exclaimed when she realized one of them contained something that looked like a rocket launcher. "Zombie Roadkill, any idea where the best place to aim this thing would be?" she called out to Layla, unsure as to where the girl was.

"Huh?" Layla looked around the minute she heard the word "zombie." It was, all things considered, really fucking reassuring to be with Wonderfrost and der Fremde again. Especially after shoving a gun in some dude's face and nearly getting dead. Again. The girl was battered and bruised and sort of limping a little, but she did was she did best and didn't think about it. Instead she located Ms Frost and sized up the distance between the two of them. Getting to Ms Frost seemed like a really bad idea. Like a they both wind up dead idea. Layla was crouched under a much small, flimsier table but it seemed like a better idea to get Ms Frost to her first and then figure shit out.

"Get outta there," Layla called back to her teacher. "Get out now. Take that thing and get the fuck over here." Her arms were sort of flailing and the gunfire didn't seem to be letting up which meant she could single-handedly get one of her favorite teachers killed but Layla was doing that trusting her instincts thing. It had mostly kept her alive this long.

Without bothering to think about it, Adrienne did as Layla told her and scampered towards the girl, rocket-launcher-thingy under her armpit. A second after she was on the move, the crates she'd been behind exploded thanks to a rain of shots from the mini-guns. "Shit!" she muttered as she reached Layla, cuffing her around the neck in a momentary hug with her injured arm. The girl had now saved her ass twice. "Thanks!" She hefted the rocket launcher with her uninjured arm and aimed it at the nightmare that was shooting at the group. "Okay, now I want to hit it in the face."

Sarah was doing her best not to get shot or crushed or blown up, which was difficult given her post-mutate condition - she felt like death warmed up at best, and overexerting herself wasn't helping in the slightest - but she couldn't stop. Gunfire was ringing all around her and she was standing behind a large hunk of metal, the remnants of something that had already been destroyed, and she hoped that lightning wouldn't strike twice. In all the chaos she looked around and, to her amazement, she spied Layla with Ms. Frost. "LAYLA!" It hurt to scream but she didn't care, and she almost ran over to the other girl, stopping herself to look around first because there was a battle raging around them after all.

“DON’T!” Leaping from his position behind Wade, North rolled forward and pulled Sarah fully behind the cover. A second later, bullets rained from above and he cursed colourfully under his breath, still holding tightly onto the girl. When the gunfire eased, the marksman released her and swung the sniper rifle he had recently stolen to his front and stole a quick look at Moreau, sparing a moment for amusement at Wade’s seemingly endless supply of grenades. Blindside him, blindside him. If he could approach the thing from a blindspot, North was pretty sure he could take out at least one of those fucking annoying guns.

“Miss Miller will be fine,” he told Sarah as he retreated to adjust the scope rings on the gun, a blunt confidence in his voice that he honestly did not feel. “As long as you keep yourself alive.” He debated internally for a moment before he pointed towards parked a jet further away from Layla and Adrienne, but to the side of Moreau and past Scott and Wade. “I’m headed there. You can stay here and keep your head down, or go to Deadpool, or come with me.” Either option should keep her alive for more than five minutes.

The man seemed to know what he was doing so Sarah didn't question him. She just stood there and listened to him, hunched over and resting against their cover. Deadpool wasn't a familiar name to her, not in her state at any rate, and staying alone just sounded like a terrifying prospect, so she quickly leapt at the suggestion of following him by reaching out and holding onto his shirt. Her eyes, large enough on their own normally, were huge and pleading up at him. "Please don't leave me alone here, sir." Normally she'd be more insistent on taking care of herself but she was in no way, shape, or form able to do that very well at that point in time.

Moreau happily blasted away, the withering fire chewing up their cover and sending ricohets through out the room, tagging them. The four guns moved at independently, stopping them from flanking the monster as he bulled forward, trying to make them move into the open where they could be cut down.

The rocket launcher Adrienne was hefting only had two shots, and she wasted one trying to hit the creature in the face, which just seemed to piss it off. "Got any advice about where I should send the next one?" she asked Layla hopefully.

"Uh..." Guns...why were there always guns? Guns pointed at dude with guns. God, this was like a fucked up video game. "Not yet. I think, um, I think we need to get a better spot. C'mon." Layla actually grabbed her teacher's shirt and dragged her along behind her. Gunfire followed their trail but it was always just a little too slow as the teenager darted behind anything standing high enough to hide them. After three such stops for cover Layla held up her hand in the universal sign for stop. And then she just sat there and concentrated. "I...got nothing. I got sitting." She peered over the pile of rubble they were behind and then sat back down. "You know how sometimes you need to wait for your opening? I think maybe that's what we need to do. That or my survival instincts are shot but I'm pretty sure it's not that."

Scott grimaced as as Moreau's guns continued to to pound away at the crate he was hiding behind sending chips flying all over the place. "This has got to stop," he muttered to himself as his eyes flicked over the walls and the ceiling. A grin slowly spread over his face as his eye started glowing as he took a deep breath and unleashed a barrage of optical bolts at the wall in front of him moving his head to change the angle slightly each time. The blasts narrowly missed his friends as they approached the far wall, hitting it and scattering back towards Moreau, bouncing off wall, the floor and crates as the blasts zigzagged their way back towards the behemoth. The optical blasts converged on one of the guns on Moreau's back; first one blast then another, then a third smashed into the gun, knocking it this way and then the other. The gun started to spark and break apart under the barrage, before it finally gave up the fight and came crashing down to the ground, raising a dustcloud near Moreau's feet.

One gun down, three more to go. Wade risked another look up, over the flimsy piece of sheet metal he'd ducked behind, and frowned. North was moving Minion Number Four, who looked somewhat the worse for wear, farther down the hanger. That was all well and good, but if they were doing what he thought they were doing, they'd need some cover. Checking his grenades, he pulled a pin and stood up, lobbing it more precisely than he had the others. This one lodged near the base of one of the guns even as the weapon itself swiveled in his direction. The mercenary ducked just in time to avoid a new set of bullet-shaped scars and counted backward from three. The explosion that rocked Moreau seemed promising, at least from what Wade could hear. Poking his head around the side of his cover again, he grinned. Gun number two was officially down.

"Now you're really starting to piss me off." Moreau snarled, and three rounds punched through the thin metal and into Wade,sending him staggering back.

With Moreau’s attention off of them – bringing the mercenary one more meal up on the David-Wade treat tally – North and Sarah made it safely to the jet with minimal trouble. The marksman allowed the girl to keep her hold on the loose shirt he wore over his mutate suit as he set up the gun. She was so different from the mindless entity that had forcibly shut down his powers at the power plant, it frankly made him uncomfortable. But he said nothing as he adjusted the scope to compensate for the knockback resulting from Wade and Scott’s handiwork.

He took careful aim, evened his breathing and fired off several successive shots, probably half a second quicker than was recommended for the recoil. The bullets were made to pierce, and the impact was perfect, shattering the gun barrels and breaking the nuts and welding holding it in place. The resulting crash of metal on cement definitely warranted the pleased smile that stretched North’s face as he snatched the sniper rifle up and ducked for cover, waiting for the rain of bullets that would signal Moreau’s knowledge of his position.

While der Fremde was shooting something and dragging Sarah around - something Layla said a silent thanks for - the scrawny, bruised, blond girl grabbed her teacher's arm and hauled Adrienne out from their hiding place without so much as a word. Adrenaline went pretty far, Layla supposed. "This is the part where we find our spot," she yelled back as she ran. Something exploded a few feet in front of them and Layla found herself tackling Ms Frost to the ground, apologizing when she landed on top of the woman who swore when she landed on her weapon. Debris rained down on them but Layla wasted no time. Rolling off to the side, the teenager got to her feet, helped Wonderfrost back to her feet and went into a dead sprint until they came to a heaping pile of rubble that Layla was sure had been a helicopter once. The Moreau monster was going after someone but Layla couldn't see who. Whoever it was happened to be taking the monstrosity away from her so she was nothing if not grateful.

Layla exchanged a look with her teacher and pointed upward. "We're going on top."

Sarah stuck close to North even after they reached their new position, staying ducked down beside him even when he'd popped up to take a shot at Moreau. She looked down and realized she was still clutching onto his shirt, which she then let go and frowned at him. "Sorry about that." Part of her wanted to peek over the top of their cover to see what was going on but she wasn't about to do that while North himself was ducking behind cover. He seemed pleased with his attack so she took that for a good sign and stayed put beside him.

Moreau was down to one gun, but kept pounding away with it. He stopped beside a GDF attack helicopter and ripping the mini-gun there from the nose housing. With an unfortunately organic movement, his body engulfed the gun for a moment, and then slowly an arm retracted from inside his body with the new gun mounted on the top, firing at them.

Adrienne followed Layla upward, trusting the precognition she was now pretty damn sure the girl possessed. "Okay, we gotta make this last shot count," she muttered.

"No pressure," Layla grumbled. Directing fire had worked pretty well last time she was with Wonderfrost and der Fremde. She just, you know, had to calm the fuck down and think about it. And not think about the fact that Sarah was totally out there somewhere. She's with der Fremde, she'll be okay, Layla told herself, taking a deep breath. She and Ms Frost were hunkered down between two very sharp, very tall walls of metal that looked like it had been peeled off whatever they were actually on. Layla had her back pressed against one tower of sheet metal, something poking uncomfortably into her back which might cut her open if she shifted wrong. The teenager closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then another. Then a third.

Guns, guns, guns...it's always shooting people. I hate this place! Right, how can we take this guy out? We can get shot trying or Sarah can get shot or that Wade dude and okay I don't really like him but I should probably try to not get him dead. We need to disarm the fucker before he shoots any of us. Like usual, a plan just started to unfold and Layla probably would have thought it wasn't great if she stopped to think about it but since when had thinking helped around here?

Gunfire was raining down on everyone they'd come in here with as Layla rolled out into an exposed position and pulled Adrienne into it with her. "There, right there." Her teacher was starting to question but Layla shushed her quickly. "You asked! Right there." She pointed to an empty spot from over Adrienne's shoulders but the Frost shouldered the weapon anyway. Layla was still pointing to help her aim and just as Adrienne pulled the trigger Moreau moved into her line of fire. The rocket came hurtling out of the barrel and collided with Moreau's newest acquisition, blowing the mini-gun off his arm in a shower of metal and flesh.

The latest explosion shook the ground and the cover against which Sarah was leaning, so when the coast was clear she scooted further into the hangar, ducking behind a nearby helicopter. She looked over at Moreau, who'd lost yet another gun thanks to Adrienne's Layla-guided rocket blast. While hiding behind the chopper, she saw the aircraft was equipped with a fully loaded salvo of Hellfire rockets, which just happened to be pointing in Moreau's direction. Sarah gritted her teeth, letting the repressed hatred of what that man had done to her, her friends, and his nation bubble to the top of her consciousness - much like how giving into the dark side must have felt, she'd later reflect - and channeled that rage into her powers. To her surprise she felt them come alive without nearly as much effort as it used to take, and without her having to touch the actual launching equipment. She then grinned as she bade the rockets to fire. The full payload launched at once, screaming at Moreau as they exploded all along his gargantuan frame, taking out his last remaining cannon.

"Ooh, you little bastards hurt me. I'm going to give it back to you a thousand times over. You're dead! You're all dead!'



The coordinated attacks had some success in taking away some of Moreau’s weapons, but the creature itself was mostly unharmed, and looked tireless. Worse, he seemed to be able to engage them at will, handling multiple targets and fights simultaneously. It was like a twisted chess master, being able to conduct multiple games at the same time. The guns tracked automatically, forcing them to attack on the peripheries, instead of being able to target the body.

Doug was taking cover, watching the tactical situation and trying to figure out how he might be able to contribute to the massively chaotic battle. He still had a rifle and plenty of ammunition, but small arms fire (and against the kind of stuff Moreau and the X-Men were slinging at each other, an automatic rifle was definitely classed as 'small') wasn't doing much of anything.

So instead of firing, he watched the guns track and engage targets. The number and behavior of the guns suggested some amount of automation. Even downloaded into a giant...(he shivered at the mere thought of the words 'meat computer')...thing, the human brain was not capable of engaging that many threats with that kind of response time. So he narrowed his focus to one of the guns, watching the way it tracked.

fire control target identified rangefinder data received range 83.56 meters elevation down 36.91 degrees pivot 73.22 degrees from midline firing next target identified rangefinder GLITCH reset

Every few targets, the gun would reset to its midline and begin tracking again. The problem was that each gun was behaving according to a different set of rules, and so the split second that one gun was resetting might put someone in the line of fire from another nearby weapon. More data, he needed more data.

He knew without even looking where Emma would be, from long tactical experience, and the closeness that came from her having been inside his head on multiple occasions. In a similar way, he spotted Marie-Ange quickly. And if he took the correct route...he broke into a stutter-stepping run, making himself an irregular, unpredictable target. About a third of the way along, he snagged Artie by the collar and dragged the young man along with him. When he was closer to Marie-Ange, he let out a piercing whistle, trusting that she would know the pitch and tone as belonging to him. [[Possible pattern,]] he signed at her in ASL with the hand not pushing Artie along, once he had her attention. [[Need more data. E-m-m-a.]] And he pointed to where the White Queen was.

~Emma,~ he sent a thought ahead of him, and when there was the wordless sense that he had her telepathic attention, he sent a complicated (but perfectly organized) summation of what he had seen, and what was needed.

Marie-Ange's head whipped around at the sound of the whistle, and in doing so, she was nearly clipped by one of the Moreau-thing's guns. She dove back at just the right moment, scraping her bare arm as she took cover. The flicker of Doug's fingers didn't register at first, though she was up and moving to follow him nonetheless. He had Artie, and the young man had already pushed himself hard earlier. The worry that Artie had overextended himself into injury was not, for the moment, something she was willing to ignore.

Registering the signs came a moment later, and it was not complete understanding. Pattern. Data. Emma. He'd used those so many times before that she knew them.

Emma had mostly stayed out of the battle unfolding in front of her, giving up the protection of her diamond form for the capacity to identify danger to team members and guide them out of the way of attacking groups as each stage of the attack on Moreau unfolded. Doug's call for her telepathic attention was as clear as a beacon to her, though, and she stretched her mind to him and nodded in approval as he unfolded his knowledge into her head. It took only a few seconds to send a swift instruction to Yvette that let the girl dive out of the way of an arcing tentacle, and then open a small version of her switchboard, linking the mind of Doug to Artie and Marie-Ange, her own consciousness holding them together even as they made their way to her side. \ Artie stumbled along beside Doug and caught what the man was saying. If Doug was calling out to Marie-Angie again then it was Target Time. For a giant, creepy meat computer. [[What do you need and where?]] he asked, signing quickly.

[[There has to be a tactical computer or something he's using to deal with all these threats,]] Doug signed to Artie. The instructions were too complex and detailed to convey in sign, though, so he waited until Emma had established a link. He tried not to think about how Marie-Ange was also being brought into the telepathic 'circuit'. This was not time to dwell on extremely complex feelings.

~The targeting of the guns glitches every so often. If we can glitch enough of them at the right times, I can pinpoint where the instructions have to be coming from.~ With enough information about reaction time, and how instructions spread to each of the guns, the centralized node where instructions were coming from would reveal itself to him. Right now, it was nothing but combinations and permutations, a cloud of possibilities occupying half of Moreau's enormous body.

With Artie spliced in through Emma, Doug could 'feel' the young man's enormous capacity for calculating size and distance. There was a lot more information being fed by his eyes, obviously enhanced by his mutant power, and Doug waded in. More information was a very good thing when you had Doug in the link.

Marie-Ange was not left out either. Doug knew her capabilities quite well, and even though she didn't have Artie's preternaturally pinpoint accuracy, her images were solid where Artie's were not, and that was also valuable.

Emma was a delicate diamond bridge spanning the gap between Artie and Marie-Ange, and Doug planted his mental 'feet' on that bridge, reaching out his astral 'hands' to place them on Marie-Ange and Artie's shoulders and direct their efforts like a virtuoso film director. In a way, it was like a bizarre reversal of the targeting computer they were trying to find - Artie's eyes were the rangefinder, and Doug the tactical 'mainframe' guiding all of their efforts.

Artie's image had to come first, because Marie-Ange needed direct visual input to fuel her own imaging. A quartet appeared on the other side of the battlefield - two blonds, a redhead, and a brunet all in close proximity, and a gun tracked toward them. Then there was another quartet, and another, and another, and then an explosion of mirror images of the foursome here, there, on top of a pillar, then taking cover behind a chunk of rubble, then twisting and falling in midair as if one of the teleporters had dropped them there.

Guns tracked independently, suddenly presented with a plethora of targets. They fired, again and again, the glitch propagating among them as they each came back to centerbore at intervals.

~I need some of the sensors disabled,~ Doug broadcast to Emma. He scanned the area, finding two people closest to where the sensors lay. Jubilee and Catseye. ~Show them where to hit,~ he told her, his brain shying away from his personal feelings at another ex-girlfriend in the link, even if temporarily. The entire top of the Citadel was like an enormous 3-d chess board to him right now, and they happened to be the 'pieces' in position to strike.

Jubilee's eyes tracked the fight around her as she waited for an opening she could use, so Emma's voice in her mind was a welcome weight as she nodded, the physical manifestation of her understanding instinctive as if Emma were right in front of her, rather then several feet away and unable to see it.

She gripped Catseye's shoulder and pointed toward the left before moving from their somewhat protected spot out into the open, it wasn't necessary given her ability to direct her powers but it did mean that the sensors they were trying to hit would track toward them as Moreau spotted their seemingly unprotected selves.

Catseye had been randomly striking at the creature, without much success, and trying to avoid gunfire, with thankfully more success. When Doug had started being all sneaky with his computer plan, she'd hung back in hopes of not messing anything up. Jubilee's hand on her shoulder giving her the target and signal to go was like the match to the fuse as she was happy to be back in action again, shifting from Big to Small forms so she'd present less of a target as they moved across what she'd come to think of as the battlefield, then shifting back to BigCat as she reached the sensors Jubes had pointed out. Feeling a slight amount of glee at the chance to cause some destruction, Catseye tore eagerly at the sensors with her teeth and claws.

Marie-Ange stumbled, and the quartets she had been controlling did too, and slumped and fell over, becoming half-melted goo. A moment of recovery, and she was up again, and the images with her, but misshappen, and they shuffled like the dead, moving awkwardly.

Moreau wasn't fooled anymore, or his computers weren't, and in the

realization, the spike of panic that came from Doug flowed out to Artie, and Emma and Marie-Ange, and for a moment all the images collapsed, the flat ones controlled by a mute teenage boy and the half-solid ones controlled by an exhausted woman who had already made ten and fifteen foot tall greek statues and seen them destroyed easily.

Marie-Ange stumbled and fell and then got up, pushed along by a thought, ~our plans must be foolproof~ and she ran, her diamond legs making tink-tink noises on the pavement and the orange jumpsuits flashing against them. She ran, in the bodies of two men, blond and brunet and two women, red-haired and blonde, and then all fell, and from the ruptured remains of the images, a metal-clad knight came up, his armor forming around him, covering slender muscles and blond hair and a sword too big for him appeared in his arms.

The quartet of figures repeated ad infinitum was back and whole, but they moved in a rigid lockstep mass. The knight at the head of the impromptu army, though...

Doug recognized the knight and sword immediately. How could he not? The knight's face was the one he saw in the mirror every day, and the sword he carried was currently sitting on a weapons stand in his apartment in New York. He glanced to the knight, then back to Marie-Ange, whose eyes had rolled up in her head and was slumping against Artie, who was doing his best to lower her to the concrete without dropping her. His eyes widened as he looked back at the knight.

The steel of the knight's armor shone in the sun as he lifted his weapon high and charged, slashing left, right, high, low. It was a breathtaking sight - un chevalier, sans peur, et sans reproche. Doug wondered - could this still be the way Marie-Ange saw him? It couldn't be.

It had been a long time since he had been able to call himself her knight, whether of Cups or Swords. And he was a tarnished, beaten, lonely knight these days, not the shining figure doing righteous battle with the monstrous villain. Sans peur - without fear - he certainly wasn't that anymore. He was afraid of quite a bit - some of his fears more exotic than others, but all very real. Sans reproche - beyond reproach? That was laughable. She had left for New Orleans in reproach for what he and Emma had done.

No, he wasn't her knight anymore. That was another man's job now - a good man, a man Doug liked and trusted. And so it hurt all the more to see his doppelganger, a vision of what he might have been, drawn from her mind and perhaps even inhabited by her consciousness, judging by her passed-out form.

He shook his head sharply, drawing out of his reverie. Now wasn't the time. The army had bought him the data he needed, and Jubilee and Catseye's blinding of the sensors had exposed the final pieces of the mental puzzle. He knew where the computer was. Now to eliminate it.

He scanned again, spotting another shock of red hair, a face that brought another complicated surge of emotion, as if the entire situation had been designed to deal Doug a triple blow right in the heart. Terry pivoted and let a scream rip forth, and in Doug's mental 'ears', there was the rushing sound of water. He was tired. So tired. He had been the anchor point, keeping Emma or Artie from falling into the 'black hole' that was Marie-Ange's peculiar astral presence. It would be so easy, so easy to just let go and let the water push him over the edge, so easy to lose himself and just fall...

The sound of water in his mind was replaced by a rush of air, and the buffeting of a large pair of wings, and suddenly Marie-Ange and Artie were separated from his consciousness, leaving only him and Emma in the link. ~Emma, tell Terry to knock this piece away...and then...~ He calculated angles and weights in his head. ~Clarice. She'll need to pull it out and teleport it...~ And then Doug pulled back slightly, still linked to Emma, but attempting to lock away a mass of roiling emotion.

It was something beyond instinct, some deeper level of emotion, that drew a tendril of Emma's telepathy out of her head and into Doug's; a whisper of reassurance and respect and empathy for her Knight as he tried so hard to keep the mass of dark emotions from her mind. Then she turned her attention outwards and stabbed out two probes, a quick knocking on shields to capture attention and then in with messages. She gave Terry her instructions on which piece needed to be hit with her sonic scream and a combined flowchart/diagram to Clarice on what needed to be done after Terry had completed her task. Then she stepped out of the minds until there was only the passive link between her and Doug and the physical link where, for a moment, she stretched out and touched Doug's hand with hers.

Terry's mind was heat and muffled, almost sticky noise, like a ball of dough rising in a warm oven. It sucked at Emma's entrance and the information, pulling it down and absorbing the instructions and bits of extraneous mental debris clinging to them until a little bubble of acknowledgement blurped through to the surface. She coughed, trying to clear a voice shredded by the ordeal of the past days and hours, then inhaled and started to scream, the line of her voice circling in on the target area before steadying and locking into place.

Teleporting in, Clarice tore the housing away, just like was discussed. This was the plan, they were following it, it was working. Teamwork was an amazing thing. Once she was in, she grabbed the computer, using her discs to slice away anything extra, then teleported it to her special place. Done and done. Fuck Moreau.

Moreau tried to catch her before she teleported away, acutely aware of how his combat effectiveness had just been eroded. Snarling, he turned back to the fight. Easiest way was to bull through and some more, lessening the distractions, he thought, bringing his weapons to bear.




A slash from Moreau’s massive tail nearly decapitated Callisto, and once again, another attempt to press the attack had been thwarted by the fast, deadly strikes from the tail. It helped balance Moreau, and as he moved, protected his flanks and rear as well. Many of them bore deep scratches or slash marks from it, nearly being impaled or disemboweled while striking at him. Even the flyers were at risk, and Jean-Paul barely twisted out of the way of a stab that nearly skewered him like a butterfly pinned to a board.

Something had to be done about that, Angelo decided, wincing slightly as he saw the near miss, and glanced around - then grinned as he spotted the perfect person.

"Princess Powerful! C'mere, I need you. Think you can tear bits off of that tail if I throw you at it?"

Molly had been distracted by the...well...everything. There was so much going on and people everywhere and...it was all against ONE guy but he was so big everyone could fight him. That was...wow.

Her head turned when she heard her codename, though. Stretch Armstrong Man. She quickly nodded. "Okay!" she said. At least when she got throwed then she would land instead of floating.

Landing on the MoreauMonster with a tiny bit of an 'oof,' Molly grabbed and yanked off various bits of the tail pieces. It was kinda like taking off the shiny stuff on a chocolate egg at Easter, except much bigger and the egg was roaring and bigger than you. So maybe not exactly like an egg. Dragon? No. Mayb--

Moreau twisted like a snake under the blows, tail weaving and stabbing at the tiny mutant attacking him.

"You little bitch!" His tail snapped back, quivering as the targeting systems locked in on her. "I'm going to shove a spike so far up your ass it'll come out of your eye socket." The tail suddenly struck forward, moving fast enough to blur.

Jean-Paul saw the strike as it lined up and began moving so fast that he, too, blurred as he headed for the child. Luckily, he was minutely faster than the tail - he paused for the smallest sliver of time when he picked Molly up, knowing if he didn't he'd give her whiplash, and then they were off, twisting away from the strike. The tail went through the housing Molly had been tearing apart and the Quebecois smiled just slightly as he sat her down next to Angelo. "I did not like that tail so much, oui?"

The spike smashed through the armor plates, and pinned the rear chassis to the concrete. Moreau howled in frustration and anger, twisting and whipping himself around like a snake to try and dislodge the spike he'd embedded through his exoskeleton.

Glancing over to check that Korvus was ready to move, Callisto sprang into action, launching at Moreau at full speed, chain at the ready to toss over his body diagonally. Whatever the thing expected this apparently wasn't on the list, as the chain looped over and round without interference. Callisto caught it at the other end, narrowly avoiding getting her own arm crushed in the process, and, bracing herself, feet well apart, began to bear the hulking beast downward.

Korvus jumped in higher along the chain to help Callisto, "Heave-ho!" It was what people said when they pulled large ropes or chains in time. He had seen such in a movie about pirates.

Trying to manipulate someone like Moreau was difficult enough; add in all the chaos of the others and it was almost impossible. She tried to stay as far away from the monster that used to be a man as she could. She wanted to make sure that she could focus all of her concentration on him instead of trying to duck out of the way. There was nothing like trying not to die to break ones concentration.

The hum of the battle died away from her as she studied the strings, waiting for the right moment. It was frustrating when it didn't, when things changed so quickly as to prevent her from acting. But her patience was rewarded when Moreau shifted just slightly, moving his legs to steady himself.

Wanda pounced and her power eagerly sought out the new weakness in his stance. Instead of bracing himself, his legs suddenly buckled and he staggered as his limbs tangled themselves up.

Sarah watched the battle as it continued to unfold, almost cheering when she saw the monster fall to the ground. It wasn't the end of it, though, not yet, and she felt sorry that she couldn't do more for her friends. With the beast down for a little while, however, maybe there was something she could do.

Bouncing out from behind cover, Sarah scooted over to Moreau and laid her palm against part of the tail. She wasn't sure how much she could glean from him, being as complicated as he appeared and her powers not familiar with him, but once she touched him it was actually easier than she'd thought it would've been to discover information. The tail twitched and moved as he tried to get up, so she quickly moved her hand away and retreated once more for cover, but not before she'd found out some information that she yelled out.

"You guys! There's an emergency detachment system for the tail!" That might help them in taking the beast down, and she pointed to the location of the system as she ran away from Moreau.

Staying off the ground in a continuous effort to distract Moreau, Jean-Paul had had something of a difficult time keeping track of the conversation amongst the group of people he was working with, but when he heard the information about the emergency detachment system, he swooped down to the ground. The Quebecois landed in front of Matt and asked, "You have heightened senses, oui?"

"Yeah," Matt had been mostly staying out of the way as best he could. "Whatcha need?"

"Then you could pick the lock, could you not?" It made a desperate kind of sense in Jean-Paul's mind. Enhanced senses would allow Matt to pick out the clicks of the failsafe device's lock when the rest of them couldn't. While he had a few qualms about using a child in such a way, Callisto was busy doing things with chains and they were running out of time.

"Oh, sure," Matt agreed as Jean-Paul grabbed him and took him where he needed to be. Picking locks was something he had learned years ago, breaking into his apartment when he had lost his key. It had gotten a lot easier once he'd lost his sight and he'd gotten a lot more practice over the years in foster care. Taking a couple pins and things, he went to work, humming slightly so he could 'see' what he was working with. A minute or so later, the lock opened.

With the lock disengaged, Jean-Paul grabbed Matt once again and flew down to where the boy had been before - out of the way and relatively safe despite the dangers around them. "Merci - thank you." And then the Quebecois was off again, attempting to keep Moreau distracted while Callisto and Korvus moved into position.

With Jean-Paul and Matt clear, Korvus took off at an impressively paced sprint. He ascended the side of the behemoth at one of tangled up legs, gripping spines or plates of armor and tossing himself up several feet at a time so he could reach the release. "Prepare to pull!" He grabbed the handle and jerked with all his strength. "Pull!"

Positioning herself further down the appendage, Callisto planted her feet once more, and began to haul.

The tail snapped away from the housing, and Moreau's curses rained down on them as he staggered loose of the now useless connections, badly weakened.





“Ooof!” Kane grunted, as a metal tentacle neatly tangled up an attempted strike at Moreau, and a second punched him hard across the mouth, sending him tumbling. He moved too quickly for the follow strike with the spike legs to hit him, but it didn’t change the fact that it was impossible to properly close on to Moreau and do some real damage.

“Anyone got any bright ideas how we shut down those fucking tentacles?”

"They're too bloody slippery!" Marius got out, just as one of the organic tentacles whipped out to pin his arms to his sides. It was one of the organic ones, and the damned things had spikes, maybe poison, but Molly's powers prevented him from finding out. He made a vicious clenching motion with one fist and a portion of the tentacle's flesh bubbled and snapped with chaos. Its hold on him slackened, but it didn't seem to affect the thing's overall functionality. All Marius had accomplished was a marginal reduction in length.

The mechanical tentacles's blasts were little threat to a man who was a walking taser himself. But the strength behind them was dangerous. Jean-Phillipe had tried to catch one, but it had ripped itself easily out of his hand. And the poisonous organic ones were a problem as well. He managed to keep them away from him with jolts of electricity, so that they searched for other targets. But even at a fairly hefty shock, they would shrug it off and heal the worst of the damage. "Merde," he grunted. "There are too damn many of them!"

Wanda threw a blast of chaos energy and watched with satisfaction as it tore a hole in the nearest tentacle but a moment later, she was throwing herself prone as another one lashed out at her in revenge. "This isn't bloody well working!" she yelled, rolling to the side as it tried to slam her into vaguely Wanda flavored paste. Another blast caught the edge of it and it skittered backwards long enough for her to regain her feet. They needed to figure something out - taking the damned thing down one at a time wasn't going to work. There were too many and the things responded far too quickly to their attacks.

"When Hercules defeated the Lernaean Hydra, he used it's own poison to cauterize the wounds left after the removal of a head." Korvus offered to the group before being interrupted by the lash of a tentacle, catching one of the spines around the base in his left hand to be sure it didn't snag him as he jumped over the bulk of it. "Perhaps that is relevant."

"Distraction." The suggestion came from Yvette, the soft voice strangely incongruous in her new battle form, all spikes and sharp ridges. "The tentacles are controlled by a conscious mind, no? So we make it impossible for the mind to control what the tentacles are doing."

"Yeah. What if the tentacles each had a mind of their own?" Pixie piped up. "I'm not sure if my dust is strong enough - it didn't seem to do much to Callie - but if would tie up the tentacles by getting them to fight each other..."

"I think...," Laurie paused, silent for a moment as she tried to think her way through what had flashed up in her head, a plan of sorts, but she wasn't sure if it would work at all or not. "Maybe if we combine elements of our powers. Megan, do you think you'd be able to fan my powers toward the tentacles as well as your dust? I could give you a boost before I turn them on so you're not effected."

"Yeah, I think so. Let's try," Pixie agreed.

Laurie placed her right hand on Pixie's forearm, giving her a boost of cortisol to stave off any ill effects from the anti-cortisol hormones she released into the air around them both with her left hand, it should disorientate the organic tentacles, although she couldn't say for sure given their unfamiliar biological makeup. She just hoped that it was enough like the baseline human Moreau had been in order for it to work.

Pixie released the dust from her skin a fine cloud, where it mixed with Laurie's pheromones. It didn't look any different, but hopefully the combined effect would be enough to confuse the tentacles. To speed it on to the target instead of letting it spreading in the air currents, she fanned the faintly sparkling cloud furiously with her four wings. It shot forward in a wave and began to settle evenly across most of the tentacles. It formed a sticky white coating that quickly vanished as it was absorbed.

Turning her head, Wanda gave Marius a Look. "Care to try a few of our tricks once more?" she asked. "Considering that I now know what happens, I believe I can make sure that the rest of my ribs stay intact."

"Yes, please refrain from incurring further bodily harm on my account," Marius replied, trying a smile. It didn't last long, however. "Don't know how much help I'll be, however. Been throwin' so much today . . . I'm nearly spent."

Wanda wasn't about to tell him that she was pretty much at that end herself but didn't. She could sleep when this was over. Or when she was dead. Cliched but apt in this case. "Then let me be your hands," she said. "Feed me as much of the chaotic energy as we dare and let me be the one to wield it." She held out a hand to Marius and one to Laurie. "I'll make his world bleed."

Laurie shook her hands out, rubbing off the pheromones she'd been using onto the mutate jumpsuit that had not yet been taken off before clasping a hand onto Wanda's, and then one onto Marius's as well as she let the familiar strains of adrenalin shoot down her arms and out into the air around her as well as through her hands, and into those she held.

She felt - fantastic. As the adrenaline rushed through her body, it made her forget almost every hurt, every moment of exhaustion and, even though she knew it wasn't going to last, Wanda loved every minute of it.

Once Laurie was sure Wanda had enough of her pheromones, and she could feel the start of the feed-back loop that was Marius's reaction to her own powers, she took her hand from Wanda's and from Marius's and placed both of them down against his shoulders, flattening them against them to get as much of his flesh against hers so that she could monitor and adjust where she needed to. She just hoped someone else was watching the battle, because she had no concentration left for anything but this.

Marius was barely aware of Laurie's hands on his bare shoulders, or the pounding in his chest as new energy surged through him. Concentration, meditation. That was what Wanda had told him to do. Marius closed his eyes, took a final steadying breath, and activated Wanda's powers.

The nightmarish form of Moreau crawled with red, an almost solid mass of ever-sliding chaos tangling and untangling in a way entirely separate from the movements of the tentacles. Countless threads could have been pulled, but there was no way to predict the ultimate effect. In one trembling hand, Marius began to gather chaos. It coalesced into a blinding ruby ball that arced bursts of scarlet, pulsing with instability and raw power -- a hex bolt nearly the size of a medicine ball. Yes, there was no way to know what seemingly innocent strategy might cause a lethal cascade . . . and that was why he wasn't the one making the choice.

Marius grasped Wanda's hand and pushed the hex bolt directly into her palm.

When she'd stepped in front of Marius before, it had been an instinctual thing and she'd had no idea what to expect. Now, though, Wanda knew and had been able to prepare herself mentally for it. The extra energy sliding into her body was an invited guest this time, not an attacker or intruder, and it was easier to integrate it with her own this time. Between the adrenaline and this, Wanda took a deep breath and her mental view of her powers expanded a hundred fold.

Delicate lines in the distance were as clear to her as the ones less than a foot from her body and the more power Marius lent her, the more her world expanded. She could change and impact almost everything around her without even breaking into a sweat. It was as if the universe had decided to expand within her mind, showing her each and every brilliant little mark and shimmer just for her. It was brilliant. And terrifying. And powerful.

This, her voice, small, whispered in the back of her mind, is what Chthon was offering you. To have been a god and to have let that chance slip through your fingers.

When she let loose the first volley, a faint taste of bitterness at herself was left in her mouth. Bitterness and a touch of regret.

Chaos tore through the dust Megan had spread, and for an instant the dust flared like burning magnesium. The tentacles began to convulse.

Some only twisted into one another, tangling, while others burst with erratic growths. Some resembled the bulge of a gall or the ripple of fungal growth; others were equally, more horribly familiar. Here a tentacle collapsed under the weight of a half-formed ribcage, there another found itself snagged on debris by a too-few-fingered hand. It was as if the dust had given the tentacles themselves nightmares -- nightmares the chaos now made real.

And Marius kept pushing, kept feeding Wanda with all the power he could draw, his heart and his head now pounding as one.

Laurie could feel something going awry in the pounding of her heart and head, and she moved to correct it. She brought their hearts down from the too quick beat with a flood of calming pheromone from her right hand, as her left hand kept up the feed of adrenalin.

It was a delicate operation, and she thanked Jean in her head for the training that allowed her to do it. The hours they'd spent under supervision, learning to manage the feedback loop of her and Marius's powers rather then simply giving into the chaos of them.

As Wanda manipulated and commanded the reality around them, the ground beneath her boots turned into dust. She didn't notice. Nor did she notice that her eyes had rolled up into the back of her head - she wasn't seeing with them, not really. It was no longer necessary for her to have a visual of the strings. She just knew what to touch. There was nothing beyond the power and Moreau - Marius could have been holding onto someone else's hand for all she knew. Push. Keep pushing. Tangle the tentacles, explode them, help the others.

And then it all came crashing down. Wanda screamed once as reality intruded and showed her, exactly, how much she had pushed herself beyond her limits. Oblivion was coming fast for her but she had one more in her. The strings tangled around her as she pulled back and kept pulling before releasing. She saw Moreau's tentacles shudder as a whole ...

She saw the others move in and then nothing.

Wanda's fingers loosened and pulled from his hand, and it took Marius a moment to realize the tall woman had actually collapsed. If not for Laurie's hands on his shoulders and the chemical maintenance she was working on him, Marius would have been right behind her.

Looking at the tangle that had been Moreau's tentacles he wanted to make a jest, but all Marius could do was croak to the others:

"Well get to it, then . . ."

Yvette needed no other prompting, charging forward with her fingers growing into long knives as she did and her body armour becoming more jagged and sharp with the increased adrenaline. She hacked away at the now-immobilized lengths of metal tentacles with a ferocity never seen in the quiet Albanian, her eyes blazing with fury.

Jean-Phillipe was moving in as well, concentrating on the biological tentacles. A judicious shock to each one that he encountered left it limp and unresponsive, even more so than they had been under the psychedelic assault that Laurie and Pixie had given. As each tentacle flopped, he moved to another, leaving it to the stronger and sharper of the group to physically remove them.

Kane moved to the right of Yvette, grabbing them close to the housing and ripping them away in bunches, like weeding a garden. Some thrashed at him, but the combination of the drugs and the hex had overloaded Moreau's systems momentarily, and he was helpless for the moment as the tentacles were shorn from him.

"Now, let's see if we can get deeper-" Kane said, starting to strain at the housing. But there was a noise like a computer booting up and instead, he was forced to leap away, gashed at by several legs as Moreau pulled himself to his feet, finally back up to proper operating capabilities.

Jean-Phillipe was moving in as well, concentrating on the biological tentacles. A judicious shock to each one that he encountered left it limp and unresponsive, even more so than they had been under the psychedelic assault that Laurie and Pixie had given. As each tentacle flopped, he moved to another, leaving it to the stronger and sharper of the group to physically remove them.

Korvus moved in behind Jean-Phillipe smoothly, snagging pieces of metal from Yvette's tearing along the way. He jumped up high over the immobilized, biological tentacles in turn and slammed a large shard down into each as if they were railroad spikes. He hoped they would severe each but they would certainly be pinned, at least.





“De armor is too damn thick!” Remy snarled, as yet another combined strike splashed uselessly off the red plating on Moreau’s chest. Even with his repair protocols compromised, it was still immensely hard to get anything past the armor to do any real damage. The Cajun dove behind cover, moving out of the way as another squad came in to engage Moreau. They’d starting attacking in shifts, but already, the fight was wearing on them, and Moreau seemed impervious to fatigue.

Remy edged over behind the shipping crates to where Lorna was crouched. But the green haired woman wasn’t watching the fight. Instead, her gaze was fixated on the large central shaft that Moreau had climbed to reach the top of the Citadel.

“You see something, Lorna?”

Lorna already tried to pry the armor from the man but it had proven to be fruitless. Hiding behind the shipping crates, Lorna's attention was brought to their surroundings. She had an idea, it was dangerous, but it could work.

"Yes Remy..." Turning her attention to the Cajun. "I have an idea. See that shaft over there? If we can get something pushed into it with enough force then we might be able to break his armor." Looking over she saw Paige nearby. "Husk." Lorna waved the woman over. "Do you want to sign up for something that may or may not work?"

"It's got to be better than wearing ourselves out getting no where doing the same thing," Paige replied as she came over, several dents already showing in one of her light but sharp alloy husks. "I assume I'm getting chucked around again."

"So, make an electromagnetic field and shoot Paige down de middle? Like a rail gun." Remy cracked a brief smile, showing broken teeth from his beatings. "Remy think dat I can help wit' dis. Blink! Get Maddie and Vance over here!" Remy called, picking up the purple teleporter in the fray and pointed to the people he wanted for Lorna's plan.

Without a word, Clarice followed his gaze and teleported the other two over to Remy, then herself, appearing quite literally in a blink. "You rang?"she intoned, hoping that there was some sort of plan, because what they were doing right now was not working.

In a sudden flash, Vance stood with Clarice and Maddie, his face and nose bloodied, body damaged and bruised all over-- but still ready to fight. "What can I do?" he asked Remy, looking at the others surrounding him, eyes still glowing that unrelenting shade of happy-go-lucky bubble-gum pink. The rest of his expression? Not quite as merry.

Maddie teetered for a moment as she worked to regain her balance and rid herself of the wave of nausea. Thanks to her slight stature and roll as a non-combatant, she had been able to hide and protect herself with a certain degree of success. There were a few fresh scratches and bumps, and she was covered in dirt, but other than that she was fit to fight. Not that she wanted to. Fight, that was. She knew her limitations, and taking down a Huge Monster Machine was definitely one of them.

"I didn't do anything," she insisted, hands raised defensively. "Seriously. Duck and cover. That's all I've been doing. Just like I was told to do."

"Dat's fine. What we going to need you both to do is provide a boost down de shaft." Remy waited for Paige to husk into her dense metal form, before gripped both of her shoulders. The Cajun's hand began to glow, a deep indigo, as an energy aura slowly bloomed around Paige. Remy gritted his teeth, pushing more kinetic energy into the woman's form. The air around her crackled, as Remy finally stepped back, breathing like he had just run a marathon.

"Lorna's field will accelerate her, and you two need to push. We need her going as fast as possible." he said, before sitting down to regain his bearings.

"Thanks sweetpea, now I don't have to worry about my fear of the dark," Paige quipped, if only to herself as Remy looked rather busy, and hauled herself up and over, dropping into the makeshift railgun. It was narrower than she would have liked, but she nudged at the creeping feelings of claustrophobia with the reminder that she wouldn't be in here long.

"You didn't do anything Maddie." Lorna went over to the shaft and a green energy flowed out of her hand towards the shaft, "It is ready." She continued to hold up the field.

The youngest member of the group glanced around with a look that expressed just how crazy she was sure all the adults had become. "I can't guarantee that I won't, you know, accidentally drop her or blow her up or something." With all that energy around, Maddie figured it wouldn't take much to cause a premature explosion. She turned to Vance. "I'm ready when you are. And you should probably get that pink eye checked out cause it's like really really bad."

"Don't worry, Maddie-- I'll be helping you. We won't drop her," Vance confirmed and nodded to Remy and Lorna. He flashed a brief, grim smile at Madelyne as she quipped at him, then looked up towards the end of the shaft. He reached out a hand to her to make the blend of their powers more seamless, as his telekinesis reached out to blend with Madelyne's own TK. That pink aura blended with the younger girl's own invisible power, encapsulating it as it stretched up to the top of the shaft, and to Paige.

"Here we go, Husk!" Vance called out, and the halo surrounding his head got brighter and brighter, the muscles of his shoulders tightening as he finished, "Ready in 1... 2... 3... PUSH!!"

Just like that, Vance's hand squeezed with Madelyne's, and their telekinesis provided the massive jump, propelling Paige violently down into the acceleration chamber and out towards the other end.

Clarice opened the portal to send the Paige-bullet through, the other end of the disc being barely a foot from Moreau. He was not going to like this. Therefore, Clarice loved it.

It was a good thing Paige had a basic understanding of how Remy's powers worked, from when he'd first arrived at the mansion, or she'd be more than a little terrified at the moment. She didn't particularly enjoy exploding, even if the rush adrenaline of the speed she was moving was going to make her basically intolerable for hours. There was a brief moment where she knew, though she wasn't sure why, that she was passing through one of Clarice's portals, and then impact.

Paige exploded out of the portal, moving many times faster than the speed of a bullet. She slammed into Moreau's chest, shattering the red armor modeled on Yvette's powers. Previously though to be indestructible, Paige's speed and density was enhanced by Remy's kinetic charge, and a shock wave bloomed out as she hit with an explosion of energy. Moreau howled in pain, clutching himself as his entire body shook under the impact, smashing him into the far wall and nearly through it, off the Citadel. Paige pin wheeled unconscious away from the impact, smashing down like a steel ragdoll and tossing end over end until she fetched up against a crate, with others coming to make sure she was alright.

Moreau howled like a wounded animal, chest dripping and raw, His huge form actually trembled as he got to his feet, panting like an animal. "Now, I'm really fucking angry." He said finally, rage glowing in his eyes.




Moreau shook his head, the pain in his chest agonizing. He was supposed to be immortal and indestructible. That fucking Genegineer had screwed up somewhere. Still, it didn’t matter. They were all meat. All of them, and that was just the start. He looked around and smiled. The Executive hanger housed quick response VTOL interceptors and transports, which ate up petrol like water. There would be several caches in the hanger and – ah. He smiled.

“That’s it, you fucking insects! Now it’s time to die!” He automatic systems armored up as he went into a crouch. Around him, the air started to ionize.

“He’s setting something off!” Kane yelled, and they fell back. The telekinetics snapped up shields while Amara, John and Angel readied themselves for the heat blast. Their most vulnerable huddled behind the improvised shield while those who were hard to stayed on the periphery.

The air hummed, and suddenly caught fire, exploding outward like a wave of fire. Only desperate last minute manipulations kept it from wiping out the shields and cooking everyone. But as it went up and out, it touched the fuel stockpiles and the gas lines servicing the top three floors and licked at them greedily. Where it touched, explosions happened.

The top three floors of the Citadel exploded in the night air; a lit candle seen from dozens of miles around. The Commission and their guards were wiped out in an instant, along with the bodies of David and Phillip Moreau. The inferno snapped a shockwave over the city, and the angry riots slowed and stopped in shock as they stared at the symbol of their nation, burning in the night sky.

“Ha! Hahahaha! Burn like fuck you little roaches! Little bastard gene trash!” The monstrous form of Moreau cavorted in the ruined, burnt remains of the hanger, now wholly open to the night. Massive piles of debris were everywhere, as the last remaining pieces of the top of the building crashed down.

“Dead and dead! And soon, Xavier. Ohh, he will burn too. Just slower.” He promised himself, moved towards the shaft. The grinding sound of rubble stopped him, as a massive section of concrete ceiling seemed to move of its own volition and then be shoved away. Mutants stepped out of the makeshift bunker, pulled together with powers and overlapping shields, barely enough to keep them all safe. But safe they were, alive, and now Garrison Kane cracked his knuckles.

“You’re not going anywhere, asshole.” He said, as they piled out and formed up around him. “Except down. Hard.”