Ashes & Mist: Rescue and Retrieval

[x-eidolon.livejournal.com]

Scott updates and briefs his team.


Summer made people lazy, as though minimising one’s movements would make the heat more bearable. This was probably why the mansion seemed unusually quiet, its inhabitants hiding in air-conditioned rooms, engaged in activities that did not involve the expansion of energy and the retention of heat. It was, unfortunately, merely the calm before yet another storm.

Scott looked around the briefing room at the team gathered in front of him, looking down at the papers he had collected he opened his mouth to speak. "You all know why we're here, Charles has located an extremely powerful psionic mutant in Madripoor. She just appeared out of no-where, so he's asked us to fly over there and locate her. Hopefully there won't be a problem but we prepare for the worst so stay on your toes."

"A quick in and out, I like it." Lorna said looking up at the papers that were placed in front of her. "Anything else we should know about this mutant before we move in?"

"As she appeared so suddenly", Kurt spoke up, "we may be looking at a new manifestation. In which case, she will likely be confused and very scared."

"Or pissed off and looking to take someone's head off." Kyle suggested. "Lets hope for Kurt's and not mine. I like my head where it is - you know, usually in the fridge looking for roast beef to make sandwiches with." He rolled a shoulder and shrugged. "All we get is that she's a psion? Wow, that word is ridiculous bee-tee-dubs - so it could be like, I eat your thoughts for fun and energy or it could be "I make things float" or anywhere in the middle. Fun."

"Statistically, psionic mutations are one of the most likely to occur," Jean-Phillipe told Kyle with a much more expressive shrug. After all, Kyle was not French. "The other two likely groups of mutations being energy projectors," he splayed a hand on his chest, "and physical enhancements." He indicated Kyle with the same hand, and a smile. "The science is very new, of course, but it very much makes sense that we will be finding more psionics as time goes on."

"We won't know anything more precise until we get on the scene and find the psion." Scott pointed out. "We could be looking at anything, from someone as powerful as Jean or Haller to someone who can barely nudge another person’s mood. Regardless we all know how terrifying it can be when you're powers first manifest. And if that means you suddenly start hearing peoples’ thoughts, whoever is out there is going to need someone to calm them down and help them through this."

Kurt nodded. "And if necessary, restrain them until they can be calmed. Perhaps we should take along a psionic damper, just to give them a little relief if they seem to need it?"

"I am sure we can get one of them on board. But they are probably confused and frighten. The last thing we would want is to make them more scared than necessarily. But it might be wise to have someone there to give relief. Having someone in your head isn't very pleasant." Lorna said as she looked at the other members.

Kyle shrugged. "Not my department. I hit things." He said. "Not that I don't care or am like, callous or anything, but this is so far out of my league that I'm pretty sure it's another sport."

Scott nodded as he stood up, "There is a mutant out there and they need our help," he summarized. "Unless anyone has anymore questions grab your gear and meet at the Blackbird. Wheels up in 30 minutes."




The team of X-Men chance upon their target who is under attack and not what they expected.



Scott gestured his team forward. Since they had landed in Madripoor, they had been tracking the newly manifested mutant and now they were finally closing in on her position. "Keep your eyes peeled, she should be around here somewhere," he warned everyone as they approached the end of the street. The sight which greeted him as he turned the corner was sadly not unusual in Madripoor, a group of thugs had cornered a young girl. with a sigh the X-man stepped forward. It might not be why they were here but he wasn't going to allow someone to be assaulted in front of him without doing anything.

They had her cornered as they taunted her with leers and crude words, brandishing their weapons with a bravado that came only with their strength in numbers. Despite being clothed in a baggy shirt streaked with dirt and a pair of loose pants held up only by a coil of hemp rope knotted at her waist, there was not a hint of fear to be seen about her.

Or perhaps she merely hid it well.

The apparent ringleader of the motley gang approached, encouraged by her lack of resistance. Foul words were uttered by filthy lips, punctuated by the careless waving of the flimsy knife he held. The thug made it three, maybe four steps before Rachel sneered and snapped an arm up.

An unseen force lifted him off his feet by the neck, viciously crushing his windpipe before tossing him back at his companions, scattering them.

“I dare you,” she warned, voice a low growl but nevertheless audible on the closed-off road. “Just one more step forward by any of you and I’ll see to it that all of you die.”

“Freak,” a nameless thug snarled, raising his baseball bat above his head. “You don’t scare us.”

Yet the expression on his face as he collapsed could only be named as fear, his own bat battering the back of his head on a downswing.

"Merde." Jean-Phillipe muttered. The cul-de-sac and the darkened buildings around them put him in mind of the dockside warehouses he had worked in, and all the mixed memories that went with it. And the group (to call them a gang was giving them too much credit) of Neanderthal culs could have walked off the darkened street of Marseilles as well - more animals than men, but in a much sicker way than Kyle's claws, fangs, and easy movement hearkened to a predator's grace.

He did not miss the unnatural movement of the bat. The girl could defend herself, that was good. And clearly, she was the one they were looking for. But there were still several of the men left, and they clearly all reached a similar conclusion - she could easily pick them off piecemeal, but perhaps if they rushed her and overwhelmed her concentration... Time to even the odds, Jean-Phillipe decided, not waiting for an indication from Scott, but knowing that his leader would come to a similar decision about what to do. And so, with confidence that the rest of the team would be of a like mind, he lunged forward towards the tableau, a bolt of electricity brightening the night with its actinic flash.

Unlike his teammates, Kyle disappeared. He signaled to Scott that he was going up, and then silently - or as near as, went up the side of one building by way of badly mortared concrete block and corrugated metal. From there, he had sight advantage - and more importantly, was literally going to be able to get the drop on someone. Nothing said "stop beating up girls" like two hundred pounds of claw and muscle falling on you from fifteen feet up.

Kurt was not making the slightest attempt to hide his appearance - or his fury. He snarled at the gang as he teleported into their midst. "You should be scared. And you should also pick on those your own size." Yes, this girl had powers, but they presumably hadn't known that when they attacked her.

Friend or foe? Foe or friend? Rachel held a telekinetic charge tight against her skin like a charged cloak of armour as she considered her options. Casting out what telepathy she had retained, the redhead tracked the movements of the newcomers and counted them off. Someone was speaking, but with her attention divided and too little time to adjust to her sudden disability to have her mind in more than one place at a time, Rachel only had enough time to fling out her shield in a dome with a shout.

Within a second, she extended the forcefield’s circumference to a broad ten meters. The resulting dome was invisible to the eye, but her attackers definitely felt it. It pushed at anyone within the shield with the impact of a speeding car, sending two of their number flying through the air. She looked furious, green eyes gleaming fiercely while her hair whipped about her face, moved in an unseen wind.

“Back off, punks.”

Lorna watched as two more men went flying, this girl was truly something else. She was probably scared. Lorna started to go around, but she wasn't doing anything threatening, her metals were put away and her hands were up, but Lorna kept her eyes on her.

This wasn't a newly manifested mutant they were dealing with, Scott realized, she'd had combat training by someone who knew how to use telekinetic powers. Scott examined the girl critically, if there was someone out there training mutants to fight then the X-men had a problem on their hands. they just had a bigger problem on their hands right now. Scott signaled Lorna to circle around the girl as the other members of his team picked themselves up of the floor. "We're not here to hurt you," he said calmly, "we're here to help." Not that she needed it, she had just knocked most of his team flying with one attack. "But I'm not going to let you hurt anybody else," he informed her as his eye started glowing red.

The man -- a mutant, if his glowing eye indicated anything -- looked vaguely familiar. Rachel shook her head, one hand following Lorna’s movements with the other deceptively relaxed against her side. Another shield had been raised and the girl was ready to go back on the offensive at the slightest hint of danger. Adrenaline thrummed through her veins, blood pounding in her ears in an echo of war drums. She had not come this far only to be stalled by the harassment of both humans and mutants alike.

“Your help is unneeded and I don’t hurt anyone who doesn’t hurt me,” she replied, voice both steady and even despite the fierce expression she maintained. “Leave, and everybody walks away from this with their lives intact.”

She had, in fact, not killed any of the thugs, although some would likely breathe their last today if injuries went unattended. Further down the road, one of them was crawling away, ready to make a break for it. Rachel let him go.

"Oooor..." Kyle had pushed off the side of the building, landing in a crouch. "You could totally let us take you to the hospital and get you, you know, some clothes that don't smell like hobo." He kept his hands uncurled, fingertips brushing the ground, and looked up at the red-haired girl. "Seriously, yo, you smell like hobo and you look like you need a bath."

"We are allies...friends." Lorna said as she stopped walking, "And we never leave anyone behind." Her arms still lifted up in a defensive stance.

Jean-Phillipe grunted as he came back to his feet. He'd managed to roll with the worst of the telekinetic surge from experience, but he'd still landed in something of a jumbled heap on the hard ground. The situation was tense, one slip of a girl facing off against five other mutants. He frowned. What would he have wanted to hear, upon his manifestation, if he had been confronted with five people with powers? The girl may not have showed it, but she had to be feeling at least a bit of fear right that second. "I have been where you are," he told the girl slowly, in a reassuring tone. "I can promise you, these are good people." He stepped out between Scott and the girl, blocking Cyclops from any telekinetic thrust the girl might throw, but also blocking the girl from Scott's glowing eye. He spread his arms wide, reaching to try and symbolically bridge the gap between her and them.

She offered Jean-Phillipe a tight nod and lowered her arm. But Rachel’s stance remained rigid as she took a step away from them. They sounded like they were cornering a wild animal and trying to soothe her into complacency before luring her someplace else to devour her. For that alone, she did not feel comfortable enough to relax around them. Without a clue about the current political climate -- the English newspaper that she had pilfered an hour ago had not provided any useful information at all -- putting her trust in anyone was unwise. In fact, her best bet was to find some way to contact this world’s version of her professor for him to lead her to the X-Men.

“Don’t know where y’think I am right now. But I appreciate that you may’ve wanted to help me and I’m sorry for throwing you like that. But I must ask that you walk away,” she said, tone firm and brooking no argument as she arched a brow pointedly at them. “As you can see, the hoodlum infestation is no more. An’ maybe I do smell of hobo, but I’m unscathed. Perfectly capable of takin’ care of myself too.”

"We think you're in Madripoor, wearing dumpster clothes and just had a giant power surge." Kyle sat back, and shucked off his jacket. "Look, at least let us get you some clothes and a hotel room, and give you some phone numbers of people, okay?" He held the jacket out, clearly offering it. "Maybe you're capable of taking care of yourself, but what about next time, when it's ten guys, or fifteen, or when they decide to follow you back to whereever you're staying and shoot you?"

Scott took his cue from the rest of his team and let the energy buildup in his eye fade away as he relaxed his stance slightly. "Or if you want you could come with us. The professor could help you find your family and get in touch with them." He gestured around at the city, "You don't really seem like a typical Madripoorean citizen."

"The professor would probably want to meet her." Lorna looked at the young girl and lowered her hands, "Get you cleaned with new clothes and some food."

Kurt staggered to his feet, looking a little dazed, and took a single step towards the girl. "We will not rush you into anything, and certainly not force you. Perhaps Kyle's idea of a hotel room might be best for now - more secure, we would pay, and none of us would have a key."

She had been stubbornly shaking her head, not understanding why in Magneto’s balls they were so insistent on taking her in like a stray, regardless of how ragged she looked. Like, where the hell did they get the idea that they could dictate whether or not she should be cleaned up or left on the streets to be killed or not. Verdant eyes hardened, mouth tightening around the corners as frustration welled up in her. She tamped it down, and readied to levitate herself the crap out of there, heels already lifting off the dusty road.

“I dunno who the fuck y’think you-- Kurt?”

And Rachel stared dumbfoundedly at the blue-furred mutant for a long moment before she planted both feet firmly on the ground and shut her gaping mouth.

“What’s the professor’s name?”

Kurt stared back at her, blinking, and then studied her more closely, her hair, her green eyes, the lines of her face and though time and hard living had changed her a little, he knew.

"Charles Xavier. But you, you cannot be here, you died. I was there, I saw it."

“I’m not-- You’re not--” Rachel desperately fumbled for the right words as she drank in the sight of this version of Kurt Sefton, unscarred and more whole than the day she had first laid her eyes on him. Her gaze shifted then, from Jean-Phillipe to Scott and Kyle before she turned her head to glance at Lorna’s head of green hair. There was a sharp pang in her chest and the redhead psion was forced to remind herself that this was not her world and these were not her people.

Finally, she shook her head and sought out Scott’s one-eyed gaze over the Frenchman’s shoulder, muffling the telepathic voice she could almost hear in her head of the Cyclops she once knew. Charles Xavier was not the professor Rachel was looking for, but he would do just as nicely, she supposed.

“All right then.”

Her telekinetic shields -- previously undetected -- were suddenly dropped, and the X-Men found that they could breathe a little easier.