Ashes & Mist: A Stab from Hell's Dark Heart

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Remy returns to Muir to confer with Professor Essex and Rachel Kinross regarding his plan.



The sun had set. A small crowd gathered to watch the jet land, a heavy silence hanging over them like an anvil swinging overhead. It had been a day of frantic scrambling to deal with the crumbling seawall, and most of Muir Island’s inhabitants wanted nothing more than to hear that there was hope to be had. It was a hope they needed to cling to – the fraying rope that kept the weight from heeding gravity’s call. Without it, there was little reason to keep fighting to see the dawn of the next day.

A redhead stepped away from the crowd as the ramp was lowered, a half-hearted attempt at a smile discarded as soon its lone passenger disembarked, expression grim.

“More bad news?”

"Not unless you consider the end of the world a bad thing." Remy said quietly, looking around at the crowd. His cajun accent was just a hint these days; a light lyric that softened the increasingly common grim words he had to speak. Remy raised his voice, so the small crowd could hear him. "I will call a general meeting in a few hours and let everyone know what was decided. Until then, there's about a hundred jobs that always need to be done on this island. Best thing you can do to help is get one of them done, neh?"

The worried murmurs didn't disappear, but the crowd started to break up. Remy had been right; there were always things that needed to be done. The island was the pivot on which the entire mutant resistance to Apocalypse turned, and as a result, was always a dozen priorities behind on what needed to be done. As they started to break up, Remy turned to Rachel, the only tells of his real worry in the tight lines at the corners of his strange eyes. "The Professor waiting for us in the CIC?"

Rachel Kinross-Dayspring nodded, sharp verdant eyes meeting his and picking out the cues with familiarity before taking Remy’s arm to lead him away from the dissipating crowd. “Korvus is with him,” she said idly, to fill in the silence between them whilst they were still within potential earshot of the others. “Everyone else is trying to stopgap what information they can.”

"I don't doubt it." Remy said as they entered the main building. Once, this had been Moira's clinic; one of the world's most specialized treatment centres for mutants. Now, it held juryrigged housing, stacks of supplies and ammunition, a too small emergency hospital and the closest thing they had to a war room. She would not have been pleased about the changes. Security waved them through quickly. Apocalypse's last shapeshifter had been caught, but not before killing Alison Blaire. Now, they set guards and genetic readers at every door.

The last post keyed open the door and they walked into the CIC. Korvus had obviously been there for a while, going over new information with Betsy. Their other teams were currently deployed, mopping up the lines of the Atlantic seawall that still held, trying to contain the damage. At the head of the table, Professor Essex looked up and gave them a wan smile.

"I take it that it's bad news, Remy?"

"Oui. Could have been worse, but not by much." He took his seat, even as Betsy joined her husband at the other end. "Neramani is speaking for the UN states. With the Atlantic Seawall breached, they don't have the resources to fight Apocalypse and hold him back there and in Asia. They're willing to move to weapons of mass destruction as their response."

Korvus didn't sit often anymore. The scar across his face, from above his left ear to the right side hinge of his jaw, reminded him that complacency was potentially fatal. "She had mentioned that possibility to me. I have been insisting the world will no longer be of value if it is uninhabitable." He looked to the recent arrivals. He had been keeping close contact with Lilandra recently. "I advocate a strike team offensive."

“What? Y’mean launch a team straight at Apocalypse?” Rachel snagged a free seat by Korvus and peered at the intelligence reports, though she had been through most of them by then. She frowned as she contemplated the implications of such a plan. “I don’t suppose any of the other nations are singing a different tune?”

"The numbers don't add up anywhere. The only thing that they have in reserve are WMDs." Remy leaned back in his chair. "You might not agree Korvus, but their firm belief is that it's better to die than live as Apocalypse's slaves. We saw what his did in Mexico, or turning Japan into a rape camp for his armies. I can't say I blame them."

"It's madness, but that is what the world is right now." Essex nodded, liking the idea even less than LeBeau but seeing no alternatives. "But the strike force plan is equally flawed, Remy. It's exactly what Apocalypse will expect; a desperate gamble with our best people to punch through before he can exploit the loss of the Atlantic seawall."

"I know. Which is why I'm altering the plan. Our person inside Apocalypse's citadel has confirmed that he'll be having some kind of private ceremony to prepare to the invasion. He'll be out of the Citadel and in Manhattan proper. That's where we'll hit him. He's going to expect an all out assault, but the right handful of people can slip through the old Morlock tunnels and take him unawares. Kill him, and his commanders won't be able to keep cohesion long enough to break through. It's the only way to give UN forces enough time to rebuild defenses." Remy outlined, and Essex raised an eyeball.

"That's likely a suicide mission."

"Name one of our options that isn't one right now."

Doomed if you did, slaughtered if you didn’t. Rachel leaned back in her chair and regarded her mentor. “How much information do you have on the ceremony? And how small a handful are you thinking?”

"Location. Guards. He won't be undefended, but it's nothing compared to taking on the whole Citadel." Remy looked over at Korvus. "I want you, Domino, Pryor, Jay and Creed. Amanda will port us in."

"Ms Sefton isn't in any shape to-" Essex started, but Remy cut him off.

"If Betsy joyrides what's left of her mind, she is."

"Remy-" Braddock said warningly, and for the first time the cool, calculating exterior cracked for a moment as he slammed his hand down on the table.

"We will do what needs to be done. All of us. Or you can leave now. We no longer have the luxury of choice." His voice lashed like a whip, and Essex took his wife's hand, gentling her.

"And what about-"

"Betsy stays here. So does Rachel. If it doesn't work, Betsy will assume overall command, and Rachel will reshuffle the teams under the best commanders we have left. If we fail, then you have to play for defensive depth. Abandon Muir and the UK with as much as you can. It will slow them down, maybe convince them to make a mistake. They're going to try and throw up a temporary wall along the north coast. If you can delay them long enough, you might be able to hold him there for a time. Maybe one of the nukes will get lucky and take him out."

Rachel sat up with a stare, hand reaching for Korvus’ arm as she tried not to give in to the immediate instinct to raise a verbal and very vocal protest at being left on the island while the rest. A brief telepathic tussle ensued between herself and Betsy before Remy received a telepathic knock from the redhead in his head. “~Let me see,~” she demanded, needing to know exactly what had gone down to make Remy willing to use Amanda that way. And what made that too-small team of 7 mutants suitable for the mission.

"~Remember your manners. And stay away from Gambit.~" he said, cautioning her like always about the dangers of entering his mind.

Waving aside the warning, Rachel slipped into his head with practiced ease and reviewed his memory of the meeting with the world leaders. The extreme measures the humans were willing to take sent a shudder through down her spine even as she relayed the information to Korvus and Betsy, who would no doubt share it with the professor.

“I want to go,” she asserted, voice flat as she met Remy’s two-toned gaze head on. Her hand tightened around Korvus’, silencing whatever protest it was he was about to make at her announcement.

"I know you do. But you're not." Remy said, his voice hard. "You're our last big gun, Rachel. If Apocalypse got his hands on you, got you in one of McCoy's labs for a personality rewrite, not even a nuclear strike could save this planet. You told me before I give you your first command that you were ready to lead. That you understood the choices that you might have to make and the sacrifices involved. This is what that means. You need to lead your team, and not come with mine."

Green eyes flashed, suppressed fury at having her words thrown back at her surfacing for a moment before it was tamped down. “Taking me with you would raise your chances of success on this suicide run, Rem. If it fails, I self-destruct before Apocalypse can even place my bloody pinky in one of his personality rewrite machines. You’re willing to use Amanda but you want me to stay behind and play back up to a mission that must succeed? How is that a worthwhile sacrifice? It rather seems like you’re already planning to fail.”

"I need killers, petite, and you're not one. On this mission, you're a liability." He said finally.

“Bullshit.”

"Rachel," Essex broke in, wanting to spare them this fight, but knowing that it would do little good against Rachel's desperate need to try and save her boyfriend and mentor. "Your power level will be picked up in minutes on arrival to New York. The rest of them don't show up properly either Apocalypse's mutant scanners or Brain Trust sentries. You would have to fight every step of the way." Which was true. Remy and Domino powers naturally made them hard to scan, Pryor's hounding imprint to Creed had rendered them equally difficult, Jay had his mind shielded by Blaquesmith's tinkering and Korvus's relationship with Nananki disrupted his signature as a mutant.

Indecision warred within her as she scowled at Essex, unwilling to concede the point. Glancing up at Korvus’ face, his thoughts written as plainly on his face as if he were speaking into her mind, the psion finally sat back in her seat. “~You bloody well get back to me in one piece.~” The telepathic message was sent simultaneously to Remy and Korvus as Rachel released her boyfriend’s hand and reached for a data pad, expression still stony.

“Detail the action plan.”