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xp_logsThe Serpent Society attacks. First, Ororo and Cammie deal with Roland - otherwise known as Death Adder.
When Cammie woke up, she was expecting to still have a warm body by her and perhaps be giving the night another go. It took her a second to realize what woke her was actually the fire alarm and that Roland was gone.
"...Fuck," Cammie said, quickly rolling out of bed and pulling on a pair of boy shorts and a tank top and opening her door to chaos in the hallway without even taking the time to clean up, without even paying attention to where she was going.
A moment later a familiar silver-haired figure appeared at the end of the hallway; Ororo, unable to sense any smoke or fire in the building, had come down the stairs to investigate the loud, and very persistent, alarm. "Cammie!" she exclaimed, hurrying towards the young woman. "What is going on?"
The fire alarm may have alerted the brownstone's residents, but the shrill piercing noise also did a very good job of covering any noise from approaching footfalls.
If it hadn't been for Cammie's immunities, he would have simply slashed his wrist and poisoned them both before they even heard him coming. But Cammie would require taking care of in a different way. Not that he minded, really, and the irony of sticking her with a dagger when he'd stuck her with something else was not lost on him. And two bodies' worth of poisoned blood would likely do for the other woman.
And so what was going on became all too apparent when Death Adder, aka Roland, aka Cammie's bedmate from last night, lunged, with no warning or clever quip at all, at Cammie with a short, serpentine-bladed dagger.
"Fuck if I know," Cammie said, turning around. The fact that she had forgot her bandages may have saved her life as it gave her the split second of seeing Roland with the knife she wouldn't have had otherwise, "The fuck are you doing?!" she demanded, barely dodging the the blade, it cut fabric but not skin, "Roland, what the hell?!"
The split-second wash of relief that Cammie seemed to know this young man was replaced with apprehension as Ororo realised that the movement had been an attack, quick and brutal and obviously related to the alarm that was blaring out around them. "Watch out!" she cried - an unnecessary caution, perhaps, but all she could think to offer just then.
Roland was silent as he bore down on Cammie with another slash. Taunting and sarcasm were unprofessional, and he was a professional engaged in a deadly earnest job. When he saw that the element of surprise had failed him, he brought his palm over the edge of his knife at the end of the slashing motion, opening a shallow cut on the palm of his other hand. Cammie might be immune to the toxins in his blood, but he was willing to bet the other woman wasn't, and he flicked his hand to send a spatter of blood in her direction to keep her busy.
It didn't take a genius to figure out what he was doing. Lunging for him though, when he had a knife was suicidal. A weapon automatically imbalanced a fist fight, but fights were her element and her stance instantly changed even if the look of total confusion and shock on her face didn't, "Get out of here, he's going to try to poison you!" she said to Ororo, "He's like me! And what the fuck are you doing?! Seriously!!"
Whether or not this young man was previously a 'friend' of Cammie's or not, he had waived any right to good treatment when he started waving a knife around. The splatter of blood was easily deflected with a small gust of wind, and Ororo kept her distance for now, gauging the width of the corridor and how much room there was to manoeuvre around the two other bodies. "He needs to be disarmed, now," she told the young woman, hoping she would stop her chatter and act.
Disarming a skilled knife fighter is much easier said than done, and Roland was very skilled. He held his knife in the deceptively loose grip of a professional, ready to slash or stab at anything that entered arm's reach, including Cammie. The tip weaved back and forth like the hypnotic motion of a snake's head as he circled to put Cammie between himself and Ororo. The ideal strategy for a one-on-two fight is to keep one of your opponents blocked, a strategy made much easier for him by the narrowness of the hallway. His palm was still slowly leaking blood, but he paid it no mind, watching Cammie intently.
Cammie circled him as well, looking for an opening. Training with Logan and even some with the crazy asshole that was banging Frenchy made it a bit easier, but she still didn't want to get herself stabbed which could kill everyone in the building if she wasn't careful, "What the fuck. I wasn't that bad in bed," she quipped, "What the hell?" she said, she had to pick the right moment or it could turn even worse. Easier said than done when confusion took over.
Roland could have replied to the crack about being bad in bed, but he sensed that remaining quiet was more effective in unnerving her. Without the element of surprise, though, things weren't going his way - Cammie backed away from a straight thrust, ducked slightly under a high slash at her neck, and he was just barely keeping her between him and Ororo.
It took another second of watching him before she was able to weave in and grasp his wrist in her hand, "You don't want to say anything, fine. Suck it," and slammed it hard against the wall. Three times for good measure. It didn't take much to get the knife and roll out of the way, "Hit him now!"
Luckily Ororo had been waiting for this moment; as soon as Cammie had dodged away Ororo funnelled a gust of wind down the corridor, a proper gale-force designed to knock him back and hopefully off his feet so that they could incapacitate him for good.
That much air moving sharply through a small corridor created a boom that rattled a fair portion of the building. The change in air pressure burst Roland's eardrums even as the wind carried him down the hallway. Completely out of control, he landed especially poorly, one ankle twisting underneath him and his shoulder slamming into the wall at the end of the corridor with enough force that it separated with an audible pop.
Death Adder grunted, clearly in pain, as he struggled to his feet. He glared murderously at Cammie and Ororo, but he clearly knew he was in no state to take them on now, and he staggered several steps to the stairwell door, making his escape. He'd get his back, he swore to himself as he went. They hadn't seen the last of him.
Emma and Jubilee encounter Black Mamba and friends on the roof.
Jubilee opened the door from the roof as quietly as possible, which was very considering they kept the hinges well greased. She'd made an exit from her room the moment Bucky had raised the alarm and come up onto the roof hoping to get a better bead on the situation, or at least to come at it from a more tenable position then being stuck in her room.
It was somewhat of a surprise then to be confronted with two of the intruders seemingly opening the door from the other side. She used her powers immediately, setting off a series of 'flash-bangs' while flipping backwards along the roof, having taken into account the new obstacles of the construction Remy and Ororo had been working on.
Emma had cursed when Bucky Barnes had raised the alarm, sending her mind skittering out quickly through the building and quickly sorting the considerable number of opponents that they were facing from the minds of her rapidly waking and moving colleagues. Whoever they were, they had had enough training that her mind wasn't able to immediately penetrate their shields.
Even as Emma was considering her next move, she heard the noise that identified Jubilee's powers immediately above her. Being trapped in the third floor hallway, originally on her way to visit Bishop, was definitely not high on Emma's option list for defensible positions. Being able to enlist someone with more immediately useful offensive powers could be useful.
Meanwhile, Jubilee had realised she was in a lot of trouble as four more enemies had popped up over the side of the building, seemingly using the same fire escape she'd just come from. Six against one, those weren't great odds. Luckily for her, she didn't have to rely on strictly physical means of confrontation and while she hated the resultant days of eating everything she was going to have to go through, she was just glad she had the ability right now.
She hadn't expected them to get in so close so fast however, and she had to duck away from a knife stabbed low, even as she sent multi-colour plasmoids outwards in an uncontrolled spread. Control would take focus, and she had no focus left as she kept herself ahead of the assassins. She needed a distraction, something that would allow her the time in order to get her sparks into place in order to set them off. It was then she felt the scratch at her mind that training with Emma had taught her to recognise, someone was reading her.
Ahead of her, something stirred in the shadows cast by Ororo's new mini-greenhouse. Two more shapes stepped out from behind it, but as they came into the light, it became clear these weren't assassins. Their faces were as familiar to Jubilee as her own.
Jubilee hadn't seen her parents since the night they'd been killed, and so seeing them now was more then just a shock. She paused for a moment, and then had to quickly duck out of the way of a well aimed kick to the head, rolling forward toward people who couldn't possibly exist and yet did.
"Mom, Dad, you have to get out of here!" she called, coming up on her feet at a run toward them. She didn't care what their reason was for being here now, just that they were alive and that she had a second chance. "It's not safe."
They didn't reply, only smiled and held out their arms to her. Something in their expressions promised warmth, love, protection. Everything Jubilee had wanted in her life since they were taken from her.
It didn't make any sense, but...Jubilee rushed to them, enveloped in a hug and they smelled like her parents, that scent she hadn't known since she was a little girl and the world had not been as it was now. She felt safe, she couldn't remember the last time she felt...There was something she'd been meant to be doing, something important that she couldn't quite think and then all she could feel was their arms around her and she could smell her mother's perfume and everything was right with the world.
It took a change to diamond and a shoulder charge to get the door to the roof open, but Emma finally managed it. She managed to catch herself as the door opened and not burst outwards unprepared, giving her time to determine the situation before she threw herself into it. The sight of six assailants making their way way to Jubilee was not unduly surprising. The sight of Jubilee embracing thin air, ignoring the situation around her, however, was.
Emma cast her mind outwards and found the telepathic link that had intruded into Jubilee's mind, tracing it back quickly to its source. Not one of the six she could see, but a seventh, a woman who lurked out of sight. A woman who, by using her powers offensively and concentrating so hard on Jubilee, had left the door to her mind ajar. Emma didn't need an invitation.
One of the things that Emma enjoyed about her own strength was the ability to, in most cases, choose her own field of telepathic battle. With a neat slip into the mind of the woman in the shadows, Emma took them both onto the Astral Plane, the change in mental location manifesting only in the sudden appearance of a white cable appearing in the centre of the woman's forehead and enveloping Jubilee.
Even as the woman's mouth started to gape open in surprise, Emma stepped into her mental view and shook a finger reprovingly. "That," she said, grasping the cable, "is very rude." With no further ceremony, she yanked, hard.
Black Mamba hissed at the woman, before the yank pulled her astral form unceremoniously onto her hands and knees. "Bitch," she spat out. Another cable appeared in her hand and she flung it outwards, towards Emma.
“Oh, you have to try harder than that,” said Emma and caught the cable in her other hand. “And giving me access to your mind is not exactly the best plan you’ve ever had.” Emma held the two cables up in front of her and examined them, tugging hard on them every time the woman tried to get up off her knees, keeping her off balance and down. It took her only a few seconds to decipher what was coursing through the cables and then Emma found herself laughing. With a neat movement, she snapped the cable that reached past her to Jubilee, snapping the telepathic connection easily.
***
Jubilee came back to herself in a rush, still standing ramrod straight and unmoving. She couldn't remember the last time missing her parents had hurt this much. That they'd been used against her...she could see Emma and the seventh woman, who must have obscured herself telepathically, out of the corner of her eye.
One of the six men approaching her reached out to touch her, perhaps to see if she was still under Black Mamba's thrall. Either way, it cost him his life, as Jubilee exploded into motion, trapping her assailant's arm in the crook of one elbow, and placing the other hand to his chest and pouring all her anger into a single plasma burst that left his chest a smoking crater.
"You picked the wrong place, dudes," she snarled, barreling in among them, and counting on their hesitance to hit each other with their guns or other weapons. Still, the faceless men the Serpent Society had brought along were professionals, and they scattered, keeping Jubilee in the center of a rough circle, forcing her to keep her back to at least one of them as they produced knives, batons, and other close-quarters weapons. None of them reacted to Jubilee's jibes, just watched her with the cold, intense stares of men who would kill her slowly, and enjoy every moment of it.
Jubilee wasn't about to let them get set and rush her all at once, though. She moved toward one man, taking a few quick steps to launch a stomping kick. But as the man withdrew a few matching steps, and the rest of the men pushed forward, she abruptly pulled back and reversed direction from what had been a feint to lure them in closer. She was fast, and inside her man's guard before he could complete a swing at her. He managed to turn it into a downward club at her shoulder, but her movement had blunted the strike, and his fist glanced off and down her arm.
Then it was Jubilee's turn, and she brought a knee up toward his crotch. Whether he was wearing a cup in his gear-out or not, it would hurt. Instinctively, he pivoted to take it on one knee, and Jubilee switched moves again, launching herself upward as his head came downward. He staggered back a step, and her fist took advantage of the slight gap under his chin the flinch had left. The soft tissue of his windpipe gave way to her hardened knuckles, and now he was staggering backward more urgently, dropping his weapon to clutch at a throat that wasn't receiving air.
***
“Loved ones,” she said to the woman on the ground. “Oh my dear, you couldn’t have picked a worse thing to try. I’m a Frost, you know.” Emma gripped the end of the cable hard and let her family memories surge up and back through to the other woman. “We don’t do love, you know. But if you want to eat what daddy dearest did to me, then let me sate your hunger.”
The visions that filled Mamba's mind caused her to recoil in horror, realising the terrible mistake she'd made. She was no match for the blonde telepath - even a few seconds of linkage told her that - so she went for the physical attack, lunging up with a poisoned blade, slashing at Emma.
The fact that Emma was already in Black Mamba's mind meant that she knew that the strike was coming before the woman's hand started to move upwards. That link was quickly severed as Emma switched to diamond form, the blade scoring across her raised forearm. It skittered upwards and Emma turned her body, trapping the blade under her elbow and then twisting her body back the other way, a fierce and sudden movement that snapped the blade in two. Her momentum turning her, Emma continued to swivel in a half circle, her diamond fist crashing opportunistically into the side of the skull of a man (woman?) running behind her, obviously intent on joining the melee around Jubilee. Intent until he (she? they all looked the same in the dark) dropped unconscious at Emma's feet.
***
Jubilee kept moving, ducking a shoulder and dodging sideways, which was the only thing that saved her, as one of the other men had taken the opportunity to slash at her exposed back. The knife scored along
her ribs, dangerous in the long run, but not the fatal wound that would have cut all the way to her spine. She tossed a paf at the man as she continued to turn, unaimed, and mostly just to keep him from pressing in on her.
But with four opponents, keeping one away was no guarantee of keeping the others away, and a heavy fist, made heavier by brass knuckles, clipped the side of Jubilee's head. She tumbled to the roof and rolled sidelong, gravel scraping at her skin. She came to rest on her side, and her hands came up in front of her, fingers pointed like guns. "Bang," she murmured, and a slew of sparks shot from her hands, a psychedelic arc of plasma that kept the four remaining men away long enough for her to get back on her feet. "Come get some," she growled at them.
The four men rushed at her, trying to overwhelm her simply by force of numbers. Quantity, as the saying goes, has a quality all its own. But Jubilee was just as highly trained, and fought with the tenacity and anger of one who's been put in a corner. She ran forward to meet them, kicking one of the men in the gut and using him as a springboard to launch herself at another. She landed with her knees on the shoulder of the second man, striking with the heel of her hand and breaking his nose as she bore him to the ground. She continued rolling forward and under a smashing overhand swing from another assassin.
The fourth man managed to get his arm around her wrist, pulling her off-balance to keep her from standing as he thrust at her with a knife, but Jubilee twisted like an eel, using the momentum of the grab as leverage to bring the arch of her foot around and down like an ax against the nape of his neck with a sickening crack.
Three down, three to go.
***
The woman was now - a snake? "Oh come on," murmured Emma under her breath. "I may think you all look the same in the dark but this is ridiculous." Nonetheless, she could feel the pull that would draw a non-telepath's eye, a hypnotic suggestion that this was real, the snake was real, the danger was real.
But the danger was real. That blade had been poisoned and if organic diamond hadn't been an option, Emma may not have been fast enough to survive the strike. Her opponent deserved a certain level of respect.
There was, however, no time for it. Behind her, Emma could hear Jubilee fighting, the thud of fist on bone and sudden spatters of plasma but they were weakening very quickly. These people had numbers and they were proving most effective.
"I'm sorry," said Emma, shrugging off the woman/snake's effect even as she shrugged back into flesh form. "I would have liked to play longer, but this is too important." The path she had travelled into the telepath's mind was closed now, but Emma used brute force to re-open it, and then brought the full power of her mind down like a hammer, shattering pain centres into screaming agony beneath the blow. The woman screamed once and then her brain took the most merciful option and ceased to feel anything at all, her unconscious body slumping at Emma's feet.
***
Jubilee used the limp body of her latest kill as a shield against the remaining three, again giving herself time to come back to standing with them all arrayed in front of her. She was breathing heavily, but so were they. The cut along her ribs was starting to seep through her shirt, and she felt a bit lightheaded. But one of them was bleeding profusely from the nose, too. The bottom line was she needed to finish this. And fast. Who knew how many other killers were in the halls of the brownstone.
She came in again, this time deliberately, stalking fearlessly at the men who were trying to kill her. She flung a handful of gravel and grit that she'd gathered in her fist into the face of one man, making him shy away for a precious second. The broken-nosed one was her target this time, and she practically invited him to stab at her with the knife he clutched. But when he did, she pushed the thrust aside, sliding around to his outside.
A downward strike to the inside of the elbow collapsed the knife arm, and Jubilee trapped it between her forearms and jerked it upward with a circling motion. As she pulled him forward and off-balance, she put one hand on the pommel of the knife and pushed it downward, stabbing him in the throat with his own weapon.
A flash of motion out of the corner of her eye alerted her to a swing from Number Five, who held a telescoping baton much like Doug favored.
There was only enough time to get an arm in the way, and the steel cracked down heavily on her wrist. Jubilee fell back a step, cradling her shattered forearm in toward her chest. There was nothing left but the last dregs of her power, and she screamed hoarsely as she thrust her good hand forward, and the man's head simply...vaporized, leaving a cauterized stump and ashes floating down on his shoulders.
Jubilee had half a second to gasp for air, and then the final man struck. A fist into her ribs, right on the bleeding wound, and a twist of her broken wrist, blinded her with a haze of pain as he threw a punch right at the corner of her eye before throwing her backward against a retaining wall. A pistol came out of a shoulder holster and inexorably to bear on her face.
***
Sometimes it was easier not to try and break through shields, particularly when they were reasonably well-constructed. Sometimes it was easier instead to turn telepathy in on itself, weave a shield around oneself that left you inconspicuous, unnoticed. Emma had once read the Douglas Adams' books and had long ago thought of this particular technique as wrapping herself in a Somebody Else's Problem field.
It was particularly apt when she was using it to become somebody else's problem. "You people," she breathed into the ear of the assassin holding the gun at Jubilee's head, letting diamond wash across her, "are unbearably rude." A diamond fist curved up and outwards beneath his gun arm, knocking the pistol outwards and away from Jubilee. Even as the man began to recover his balance, Emma drew back her other hand and then slammed it forward and into the man's back, straight into his kidneys. A swift kick to the back of the knee was enough to take him down and he fell, first to his knees and then face-down onto the roof as Emma's fist connected with his temple and sent him into unconsciousness.
"Well," she said, glancing down at the various dead and unconscious forms that littered the roof. "That wasn't what I was planning for my evening at all." Switching back to flesh, Emma scanned and confirmed that nobody needed her assistance more than Jubilee right now. "I think it might be time to get you to hospital, Ms Lee."
And finally, Marie-Ange and her student Artie face Fer-de-Lance and her team.
Artie woke to the sound of the fire alarm, legs tangled in in the sleeping bag as he struggled up off the couch, staring at the men coming in through the door. Oh shit. This was so not good. He threw the first image he could think of at their faces and a decaying zombie borrowed from one of Layla's movies lurched toward them followed by bolts of lightning.
The men reacted to them as if they were real even as Artie scrambled behind the couch, grabbing the lamp from the end table and throwing that as well. It glanced off one man's shoulder. A distant part of himself hoped that they weren't actually friends of Marie-Ange. That would be really awkward.
The first zombie was Artie's, intangible and beautifully and horribly detailed - if it hadn't been made of light and illusion and desperation, you might've been able to imagine the smell of rot off it.
The second was less so. It could've been a twin to the first, if it's grey skin wasn't sagging wrongly and more the color of wet toilet tissue, and if the gaping jaw wasn't jiggling in a way that made it look like it had been built of gelatin. And if instead of one of the men passing through it like smoke, it impacted into him with a wet splosh, slowing him down.
It was not much - a distraction to follow Artie's, as Marie-Ange spilled out of her room, one of Wade's guns - or maybe Doug's - in her hands, unloading the entire clip blindly at the door.
And oh, god, Marie-Ange was shooting at them. Oh god. They were between Artie and the door. He couldn't get out. He took a deep breath and wrapped a bubble of darkness around their heads before jumping to his feet and sprinting to the kitchen, losing the illusion as he ran. He threw the kettle at them. Followed by a pot in the sink and, with Marie-Ange no longer shooting, their attention shifted toward him. Artie followed the pot with an ash tray and ran his hands blindly over the bench behind him for something else to throw.
"Black tins! Red tins!" Marie-Ange yelled. "Not grey or blue!" Whatever Amanda kept in those little tins, they were all marked with 'do not eat' and old peeling Mr. Yuck stickers - a legacy from when Meg had been small, furry and prone to getting into everything, and before they knew none of it would make her sick up.
The clip ran out, and she threw the gun at the men. Maybe they'd underestimate her if she looked panicked. The fact that she'd had the composure to shoot at them while in panties and a sleep tank top probably was going to prevent that, but she could always hope.
The whole exchange - busted-in door, zombies, thrown pots and wild gunfire had brought them - maybe half a minute of time, and not enough to get Artie out the door, or to the fire escape - nowhere she could be sure he was out of the way so she could unleash hell on the men intent on killing them.
Artie heard what she said and grabbed a grey tin, flipping the lid off and hurling the contents at them with the logic that if red and black were safe, whatever was in the grey one was probably better to throw right now. The herbs sort of misted to the floor in front of him in a cloud of powdery nothingness while Artie grabbed a kitchen knife and holding it hidden against one bare leg, he had a half-formed plan to try to blind one so that he could try to stab him or something and covered the men's heads in globes of darkness again.
The grey powder filled the air with the scent of ash, and Marie-Ange hesitated before stepping out of the hall. She'd shoved her feet into a loose pair of sneakers when the fire alarm went off, but she couldn't remember if the smog-infused herbs would work on skin contact or if inhaled. Amanda hadn't much said - they were 'a mistake' and the witch had just never brought them into the office for Cammie - no one else would want the tea they made, or the coughing fit that came when the tin was opened.
The men were coughing though - and trying not to, having gone silent, but feeling at their faces with arms that disappeared into Artie's black diving bubbles. The blackness was starting to melt at the edges - Marie-Ange wasn't sure how long Artie could hold the thing on moving targets and under stress, and so she moved in, a long knife appearing in one hand as she slashed at one of killers - they had to be, to break into this place - thieves would've waited until the apartment was empty.
The man jerked back, even if he couldn't see, he could hear, and grabbed at Marie-Ange, blindly hitting her arm. The disadvantage of blindness did nothing to eliminate the advantage of strength, and she only barely pulled away with a twist that slid the knife across the man's forearm and wrist, opening a cut into his jacket, and leaving the imaged knife bloody before it puffed out of existence.
Artie lost the illusions as the men grappling with Marie-Ange moved and they split their attention, one toward him, one to Marie-Ange. He didn't have enough focus to generate another zombie but managed an image of himself standing static and terrified as he lunged forward. He connected with the killer, slashing him across the stomach - Amanda's knives were sharp - before the world vanished in a haze of pain as the killer rallied hitting him hard enough to knock Artie down and behind him.
In her peripheral vision, Marie-Ange saw Artie lunge, and absently noted that the knife he had was sharp enough to cut through one of Amanda's horrible breakfast puddings like butter - that assassin was not getting back up quickly if at all, she could make sure he stayed down later - if she was lucky, he might stay alive long enough to get some answers out of him. Her imaged blade reappeared, steely grey slashed with red from the blood smeared on her tattoo, and she returned her focus to the man trying to cut her throat.
Artie slashed the knife across the back of the killer's knees and thighs, cutting down to the bone before scrambling back out of the way. There was blood on the couch now, he noted with a little distant part of his mind.
One down - even if Artie did not finish the man off, that particular invader was not getting back up - Marie-Ange focused on her opponent, trading a hard punch to her face with a knife thrust under the ribs - she could live with the black eye or cracked cheekbone, the man she was fighting would probably lose a kidney - if he lived through this, which she intended to not let him do.
She ducked a wild swing, and twisted the imaged knife, letting it disappear before she even pulled it out, and plucked another out of the air before the blood had colored the man's shirt, and retreated, taking careful steps back towards Artie. Marie-Ange's free hand flickered out two signs - fire and escape and she made eyecontact with the young man.
He nodded, sprinting to the fire escape and throwing open the window, knife still clenched in one fist. Part of him was appalled at the thought of leaving Marie-Ange behind but mostly, Artie was relieved to be escaping and suspected that she'd be safer without him in the room to worry about. The fire escape was frosty and painfully cold under his feet.
Before he could make it down half the ladder, the fire escape shook with the weight of someone dropping on it from above - a compactly built black-haired woman, who advanced on Artie, slashing at him with long slender metal spikes coated in a sticky looking white paste.
Artie tried to move faster but the ladder was icy and he was afraid he'd slip and fall. Fer-de-Lance twisted on the ladder, grabbing his hair with her free hand and smacking Artie's head against the side of the ladder. He was stunned and she snapped her other hand forward, stabbing the boy in the temple with one of her metal spikes.
Artie fell to the landing below and lay crumpled and still.
The clang distracted Marie-Ange long enough for her opponent to make one last attempt at her, weakly trying to grab at her throat, then hair, then shirt as she shoved him away. He crashed into a chair and slid onto the floor, leaving messy streaks of blood from his injured hand as he fell.
Before Marie-Ange could make to the window, it was already too late, the third assassin had already come through it in feet-first, blades out, and a sneer on her face as she looked at the pajama-clad Frenchwoman.
Fer-de-Lance spared a quick glance for the two flunkies bleeding out on the floor. They had hoped to take places in the Serpent Society, but had clearly failed their first, and fatal, test. No matter, they had accomplished the task she had set to them, flushing her prey out the window onto the fire escape. The young man hadn't been on their list of targets, but any guests in the building were to suffer the same fate as their hosts. "No survivors" was the instruction they had been given.
The sneer remained in place as she advanced on the redhead. The first kill had been easy, she saw no reason why this one wouldn't be the same. The spikes extended from her forearms as she assumed a widened version of a fighting stance, one arm cocked back over her head with the spike slanted downward to guard her face, the other curled low at her waist, the spike extending outward and ready to stab or slash.
She stalked forward several steps, savoring the power differential. Her target would be expecting an attack from the low blade, so instead she lunged, the upper blade stabbing directly at Marie-Ange's throat.
The foot that Marie-Ange raised to stamp the invader's knee was bare - the foot that connected was covered in the heavy black leather of one of Amanda's boots - a pair was neatly put away in a corner, just back from the cobbler, and while the originals wouldn't fit Marie-Ange, the imaged boot on her foot was a perfect fit, and as dense and solid as the real thing as it smashed into Fer's knee and scraped down her shin onto her ankle.
Fer-de-Lance twisted instinctively to protect her kneecap, a motion which robbed enough of her forward momentum to keep her thrust from landing. She continued the motion, pivoting to bring most of her weight onto her back foot, and bringing her low blade around in an arcing horizontal slash aimed at Marie-Ange's midsection.
There was no time for this, Artie was gone, either down the fire escape or worse, lying where she'd heard him fall. Marie-Ange pulled a staff from the air and the design tattooed onto her arm and swung to block the slash as she moved forward, advancing towards the other woman - and towards the door.
Not quite so easy as she'd though, then. No matter, Fer-de-Lance thought. Easy, hard, they all fell. She hadn't found prey yet that didn't. She snapped out of the pivot like a coiled spring let loose, slashing a diagonal overhand at Marie-Ange's torso from shoulder to hip, but the staff twisted to block that strike as well. She pulled back and circled counter to the redhead, keeping her target in front of her. They had each taken the measure of the other in that opening flurry, now it was up to who could make the other misstep first.
Fer-de-Lance lunged forward. Blades against staff made their reaches roughly equal. Edged blades and poison against blunt weapon gave her an advantage, though. It wasn't impossible to be lethal with a staff, but it would take more, and so she pressed the offensive, almost inviting Marie-Ange to get a strike in to a non-vital area if that was what it took to get one of her blades to land.
That was a valid tactical assessment. At least, until mirror images of Fer-de-Lance's blades appeared on Marie-Ange's forearms. The women clashed and parted. Fer-de-Lance blinked. This was not at all what she expected. She had invaded this woman's home - but there was no fear, no anger, almost no expression on her face. Coupled with the shifting weaponry, it was a bit unnerving.
Still, she had a job to do, and she pressed the attack again, grunting with pleasure when her blade hit home in Marie-Ange's bicep. She moved closer as the injured arm dropped, sensing the kill, only to take a long, vicious cut over the eye from the Frenchwoman. Blood dripped into her eye, quickly blinding her on that side.
Fer-de-Lance retreated, clearly uncertain. Her injury, while not lethal, was a very real danger, as she could not detect anything coming from one side. She needed to bandage the wound, or something, before she did anything else. She retreated warily toward the door, and Marie-Ange let her go, not pursuing.
She waited maybe a handful of footsteps, a few seconds, enough to hear the woman running down the hall before Marie-Ange ran back to the window, scooping up a phone as she ran, and punching in a memorized number. "Amanda! Please help! Artie was here, we were attacked." She was too quiet - it felt like she could not speak loudly enough at all, couldn't get enough urgency in her voice to make it clear that her student - her friend - was laying barely breathing on the fire escape, bleeding from the wound to his head.
"'M here." The reply came not from the receiver but from behind her, the witch already moving past her and climbing through the window to reach Artie's unconscious form. "It was a set up," she replied shortly, examining the teen with a wince. "Belladonna." Her face was grave as she looked at the wound to his temple. "Fuck."
"Can we move him?" Marie-Ange came through the window all at once, ungainly and awkward, and knelt down, crowding the already too small fire escape. "What do you need?" Her hand fluttered - reaching out to touch Artie's face, and pulling away before she made contact, and then reaching out again. "She had poison, the woman - my arm..." The wound burned, more than it should've. "I don't know what kind yet."
"Donors. Ones that I can use up." Amanda's expression darkened. "Did you leave any of these fucks alive?"
"Artie did." One of the men was still breathing - Marie-Ange wasn't sure if the one she had fought was alive, but the man Artie had wounded was - she'd saw him try to get up and fall when she grabbed the phone, but he was bleeding out "The other, I don't know."
"It'll have to do. I can stablise him, but he'll need a hospital. Get on that while I do my thing." Amanda looked up at her friend. "I'll try not to weaken you guys too much, but I might need some extra juice. This is bad."
"As long as I do not lose my arm, take whatever you need." Marie-Ange said. "I will call everyone. Do whatever you is necessary."
When Cammie woke up, she was expecting to still have a warm body by her and perhaps be giving the night another go. It took her a second to realize what woke her was actually the fire alarm and that Roland was gone.
"...Fuck," Cammie said, quickly rolling out of bed and pulling on a pair of boy shorts and a tank top and opening her door to chaos in the hallway without even taking the time to clean up, without even paying attention to where she was going.
A moment later a familiar silver-haired figure appeared at the end of the hallway; Ororo, unable to sense any smoke or fire in the building, had come down the stairs to investigate the loud, and very persistent, alarm. "Cammie!" she exclaimed, hurrying towards the young woman. "What is going on?"
The fire alarm may have alerted the brownstone's residents, but the shrill piercing noise also did a very good job of covering any noise from approaching footfalls.
If it hadn't been for Cammie's immunities, he would have simply slashed his wrist and poisoned them both before they even heard him coming. But Cammie would require taking care of in a different way. Not that he minded, really, and the irony of sticking her with a dagger when he'd stuck her with something else was not lost on him. And two bodies' worth of poisoned blood would likely do for the other woman.
And so what was going on became all too apparent when Death Adder, aka Roland, aka Cammie's bedmate from last night, lunged, with no warning or clever quip at all, at Cammie with a short, serpentine-bladed dagger.
"Fuck if I know," Cammie said, turning around. The fact that she had forgot her bandages may have saved her life as it gave her the split second of seeing Roland with the knife she wouldn't have had otherwise, "The fuck are you doing?!" she demanded, barely dodging the the blade, it cut fabric but not skin, "Roland, what the hell?!"
The split-second wash of relief that Cammie seemed to know this young man was replaced with apprehension as Ororo realised that the movement had been an attack, quick and brutal and obviously related to the alarm that was blaring out around them. "Watch out!" she cried - an unnecessary caution, perhaps, but all she could think to offer just then.
Roland was silent as he bore down on Cammie with another slash. Taunting and sarcasm were unprofessional, and he was a professional engaged in a deadly earnest job. When he saw that the element of surprise had failed him, he brought his palm over the edge of his knife at the end of the slashing motion, opening a shallow cut on the palm of his other hand. Cammie might be immune to the toxins in his blood, but he was willing to bet the other woman wasn't, and he flicked his hand to send a spatter of blood in her direction to keep her busy.
It didn't take a genius to figure out what he was doing. Lunging for him though, when he had a knife was suicidal. A weapon automatically imbalanced a fist fight, but fights were her element and her stance instantly changed even if the look of total confusion and shock on her face didn't, "Get out of here, he's going to try to poison you!" she said to Ororo, "He's like me! And what the fuck are you doing?! Seriously!!"
Whether or not this young man was previously a 'friend' of Cammie's or not, he had waived any right to good treatment when he started waving a knife around. The splatter of blood was easily deflected with a small gust of wind, and Ororo kept her distance for now, gauging the width of the corridor and how much room there was to manoeuvre around the two other bodies. "He needs to be disarmed, now," she told the young woman, hoping she would stop her chatter and act.
Disarming a skilled knife fighter is much easier said than done, and Roland was very skilled. He held his knife in the deceptively loose grip of a professional, ready to slash or stab at anything that entered arm's reach, including Cammie. The tip weaved back and forth like the hypnotic motion of a snake's head as he circled to put Cammie between himself and Ororo. The ideal strategy for a one-on-two fight is to keep one of your opponents blocked, a strategy made much easier for him by the narrowness of the hallway. His palm was still slowly leaking blood, but he paid it no mind, watching Cammie intently.
Cammie circled him as well, looking for an opening. Training with Logan and even some with the crazy asshole that was banging Frenchy made it a bit easier, but she still didn't want to get herself stabbed which could kill everyone in the building if she wasn't careful, "What the fuck. I wasn't that bad in bed," she quipped, "What the hell?" she said, she had to pick the right moment or it could turn even worse. Easier said than done when confusion took over.
Roland could have replied to the crack about being bad in bed, but he sensed that remaining quiet was more effective in unnerving her. Without the element of surprise, though, things weren't going his way - Cammie backed away from a straight thrust, ducked slightly under a high slash at her neck, and he was just barely keeping her between him and Ororo.
It took another second of watching him before she was able to weave in and grasp his wrist in her hand, "You don't want to say anything, fine. Suck it," and slammed it hard against the wall. Three times for good measure. It didn't take much to get the knife and roll out of the way, "Hit him now!"
Luckily Ororo had been waiting for this moment; as soon as Cammie had dodged away Ororo funnelled a gust of wind down the corridor, a proper gale-force designed to knock him back and hopefully off his feet so that they could incapacitate him for good.
That much air moving sharply through a small corridor created a boom that rattled a fair portion of the building. The change in air pressure burst Roland's eardrums even as the wind carried him down the hallway. Completely out of control, he landed especially poorly, one ankle twisting underneath him and his shoulder slamming into the wall at the end of the corridor with enough force that it separated with an audible pop.
Death Adder grunted, clearly in pain, as he struggled to his feet. He glared murderously at Cammie and Ororo, but he clearly knew he was in no state to take them on now, and he staggered several steps to the stairwell door, making his escape. He'd get his back, he swore to himself as he went. They hadn't seen the last of him.
Emma and Jubilee encounter Black Mamba and friends on the roof.
Jubilee opened the door from the roof as quietly as possible, which was very considering they kept the hinges well greased. She'd made an exit from her room the moment Bucky had raised the alarm and come up onto the roof hoping to get a better bead on the situation, or at least to come at it from a more tenable position then being stuck in her room.
It was somewhat of a surprise then to be confronted with two of the intruders seemingly opening the door from the other side. She used her powers immediately, setting off a series of 'flash-bangs' while flipping backwards along the roof, having taken into account the new obstacles of the construction Remy and Ororo had been working on.
Emma had cursed when Bucky Barnes had raised the alarm, sending her mind skittering out quickly through the building and quickly sorting the considerable number of opponents that they were facing from the minds of her rapidly waking and moving colleagues. Whoever they were, they had had enough training that her mind wasn't able to immediately penetrate their shields.
Even as Emma was considering her next move, she heard the noise that identified Jubilee's powers immediately above her. Being trapped in the third floor hallway, originally on her way to visit Bishop, was definitely not high on Emma's option list for defensible positions. Being able to enlist someone with more immediately useful offensive powers could be useful.
Meanwhile, Jubilee had realised she was in a lot of trouble as four more enemies had popped up over the side of the building, seemingly using the same fire escape she'd just come from. Six against one, those weren't great odds. Luckily for her, she didn't have to rely on strictly physical means of confrontation and while she hated the resultant days of eating everything she was going to have to go through, she was just glad she had the ability right now.
She hadn't expected them to get in so close so fast however, and she had to duck away from a knife stabbed low, even as she sent multi-colour plasmoids outwards in an uncontrolled spread. Control would take focus, and she had no focus left as she kept herself ahead of the assassins. She needed a distraction, something that would allow her the time in order to get her sparks into place in order to set them off. It was then she felt the scratch at her mind that training with Emma had taught her to recognise, someone was reading her.
Ahead of her, something stirred in the shadows cast by Ororo's new mini-greenhouse. Two more shapes stepped out from behind it, but as they came into the light, it became clear these weren't assassins. Their faces were as familiar to Jubilee as her own.
Jubilee hadn't seen her parents since the night they'd been killed, and so seeing them now was more then just a shock. She paused for a moment, and then had to quickly duck out of the way of a well aimed kick to the head, rolling forward toward people who couldn't possibly exist and yet did.
"Mom, Dad, you have to get out of here!" she called, coming up on her feet at a run toward them. She didn't care what their reason was for being here now, just that they were alive and that she had a second chance. "It's not safe."
They didn't reply, only smiled and held out their arms to her. Something in their expressions promised warmth, love, protection. Everything Jubilee had wanted in her life since they were taken from her.
It didn't make any sense, but...Jubilee rushed to them, enveloped in a hug and they smelled like her parents, that scent she hadn't known since she was a little girl and the world had not been as it was now. She felt safe, she couldn't remember the last time she felt...There was something she'd been meant to be doing, something important that she couldn't quite think and then all she could feel was their arms around her and she could smell her mother's perfume and everything was right with the world.
It took a change to diamond and a shoulder charge to get the door to the roof open, but Emma finally managed it. She managed to catch herself as the door opened and not burst outwards unprepared, giving her time to determine the situation before she threw herself into it. The sight of six assailants making their way way to Jubilee was not unduly surprising. The sight of Jubilee embracing thin air, ignoring the situation around her, however, was.
Emma cast her mind outwards and found the telepathic link that had intruded into Jubilee's mind, tracing it back quickly to its source. Not one of the six she could see, but a seventh, a woman who lurked out of sight. A woman who, by using her powers offensively and concentrating so hard on Jubilee, had left the door to her mind ajar. Emma didn't need an invitation.
One of the things that Emma enjoyed about her own strength was the ability to, in most cases, choose her own field of telepathic battle. With a neat slip into the mind of the woman in the shadows, Emma took them both onto the Astral Plane, the change in mental location manifesting only in the sudden appearance of a white cable appearing in the centre of the woman's forehead and enveloping Jubilee.
Even as the woman's mouth started to gape open in surprise, Emma stepped into her mental view and shook a finger reprovingly. "That," she said, grasping the cable, "is very rude." With no further ceremony, she yanked, hard.
Black Mamba hissed at the woman, before the yank pulled her astral form unceremoniously onto her hands and knees. "Bitch," she spat out. Another cable appeared in her hand and she flung it outwards, towards Emma.
“Oh, you have to try harder than that,” said Emma and caught the cable in her other hand. “And giving me access to your mind is not exactly the best plan you’ve ever had.” Emma held the two cables up in front of her and examined them, tugging hard on them every time the woman tried to get up off her knees, keeping her off balance and down. It took her only a few seconds to decipher what was coursing through the cables and then Emma found herself laughing. With a neat movement, she snapped the cable that reached past her to Jubilee, snapping the telepathic connection easily.
***
Jubilee came back to herself in a rush, still standing ramrod straight and unmoving. She couldn't remember the last time missing her parents had hurt this much. That they'd been used against her...she could see Emma and the seventh woman, who must have obscured herself telepathically, out of the corner of her eye.
One of the six men approaching her reached out to touch her, perhaps to see if she was still under Black Mamba's thrall. Either way, it cost him his life, as Jubilee exploded into motion, trapping her assailant's arm in the crook of one elbow, and placing the other hand to his chest and pouring all her anger into a single plasma burst that left his chest a smoking crater.
"You picked the wrong place, dudes," she snarled, barreling in among them, and counting on their hesitance to hit each other with their guns or other weapons. Still, the faceless men the Serpent Society had brought along were professionals, and they scattered, keeping Jubilee in the center of a rough circle, forcing her to keep her back to at least one of them as they produced knives, batons, and other close-quarters weapons. None of them reacted to Jubilee's jibes, just watched her with the cold, intense stares of men who would kill her slowly, and enjoy every moment of it.
Jubilee wasn't about to let them get set and rush her all at once, though. She moved toward one man, taking a few quick steps to launch a stomping kick. But as the man withdrew a few matching steps, and the rest of the men pushed forward, she abruptly pulled back and reversed direction from what had been a feint to lure them in closer. She was fast, and inside her man's guard before he could complete a swing at her. He managed to turn it into a downward club at her shoulder, but her movement had blunted the strike, and his fist glanced off and down her arm.
Then it was Jubilee's turn, and she brought a knee up toward his crotch. Whether he was wearing a cup in his gear-out or not, it would hurt. Instinctively, he pivoted to take it on one knee, and Jubilee switched moves again, launching herself upward as his head came downward. He staggered back a step, and her fist took advantage of the slight gap under his chin the flinch had left. The soft tissue of his windpipe gave way to her hardened knuckles, and now he was staggering backward more urgently, dropping his weapon to clutch at a throat that wasn't receiving air.
***
“Loved ones,” she said to the woman on the ground. “Oh my dear, you couldn’t have picked a worse thing to try. I’m a Frost, you know.” Emma gripped the end of the cable hard and let her family memories surge up and back through to the other woman. “We don’t do love, you know. But if you want to eat what daddy dearest did to me, then let me sate your hunger.”
The visions that filled Mamba's mind caused her to recoil in horror, realising the terrible mistake she'd made. She was no match for the blonde telepath - even a few seconds of linkage told her that - so she went for the physical attack, lunging up with a poisoned blade, slashing at Emma.
The fact that Emma was already in Black Mamba's mind meant that she knew that the strike was coming before the woman's hand started to move upwards. That link was quickly severed as Emma switched to diamond form, the blade scoring across her raised forearm. It skittered upwards and Emma turned her body, trapping the blade under her elbow and then twisting her body back the other way, a fierce and sudden movement that snapped the blade in two. Her momentum turning her, Emma continued to swivel in a half circle, her diamond fist crashing opportunistically into the side of the skull of a man (woman?) running behind her, obviously intent on joining the melee around Jubilee. Intent until he (she? they all looked the same in the dark) dropped unconscious at Emma's feet.
***
Jubilee kept moving, ducking a shoulder and dodging sideways, which was the only thing that saved her, as one of the other men had taken the opportunity to slash at her exposed back. The knife scored along
her ribs, dangerous in the long run, but not the fatal wound that would have cut all the way to her spine. She tossed a paf at the man as she continued to turn, unaimed, and mostly just to keep him from pressing in on her.
But with four opponents, keeping one away was no guarantee of keeping the others away, and a heavy fist, made heavier by brass knuckles, clipped the side of Jubilee's head. She tumbled to the roof and rolled sidelong, gravel scraping at her skin. She came to rest on her side, and her hands came up in front of her, fingers pointed like guns. "Bang," she murmured, and a slew of sparks shot from her hands, a psychedelic arc of plasma that kept the four remaining men away long enough for her to get back on her feet. "Come get some," she growled at them.
The four men rushed at her, trying to overwhelm her simply by force of numbers. Quantity, as the saying goes, has a quality all its own. But Jubilee was just as highly trained, and fought with the tenacity and anger of one who's been put in a corner. She ran forward to meet them, kicking one of the men in the gut and using him as a springboard to launch herself at another. She landed with her knees on the shoulder of the second man, striking with the heel of her hand and breaking his nose as she bore him to the ground. She continued rolling forward and under a smashing overhand swing from another assassin.
The fourth man managed to get his arm around her wrist, pulling her off-balance to keep her from standing as he thrust at her with a knife, but Jubilee twisted like an eel, using the momentum of the grab as leverage to bring the arch of her foot around and down like an ax against the nape of his neck with a sickening crack.
Three down, three to go.
***
The woman was now - a snake? "Oh come on," murmured Emma under her breath. "I may think you all look the same in the dark but this is ridiculous." Nonetheless, she could feel the pull that would draw a non-telepath's eye, a hypnotic suggestion that this was real, the snake was real, the danger was real.
But the danger was real. That blade had been poisoned and if organic diamond hadn't been an option, Emma may not have been fast enough to survive the strike. Her opponent deserved a certain level of respect.
There was, however, no time for it. Behind her, Emma could hear Jubilee fighting, the thud of fist on bone and sudden spatters of plasma but they were weakening very quickly. These people had numbers and they were proving most effective.
"I'm sorry," said Emma, shrugging off the woman/snake's effect even as she shrugged back into flesh form. "I would have liked to play longer, but this is too important." The path she had travelled into the telepath's mind was closed now, but Emma used brute force to re-open it, and then brought the full power of her mind down like a hammer, shattering pain centres into screaming agony beneath the blow. The woman screamed once and then her brain took the most merciful option and ceased to feel anything at all, her unconscious body slumping at Emma's feet.
***
Jubilee used the limp body of her latest kill as a shield against the remaining three, again giving herself time to come back to standing with them all arrayed in front of her. She was breathing heavily, but so were they. The cut along her ribs was starting to seep through her shirt, and she felt a bit lightheaded. But one of them was bleeding profusely from the nose, too. The bottom line was she needed to finish this. And fast. Who knew how many other killers were in the halls of the brownstone.
She came in again, this time deliberately, stalking fearlessly at the men who were trying to kill her. She flung a handful of gravel and grit that she'd gathered in her fist into the face of one man, making him shy away for a precious second. The broken-nosed one was her target this time, and she practically invited him to stab at her with the knife he clutched. But when he did, she pushed the thrust aside, sliding around to his outside.
A downward strike to the inside of the elbow collapsed the knife arm, and Jubilee trapped it between her forearms and jerked it upward with a circling motion. As she pulled him forward and off-balance, she put one hand on the pommel of the knife and pushed it downward, stabbing him in the throat with his own weapon.
A flash of motion out of the corner of her eye alerted her to a swing from Number Five, who held a telescoping baton much like Doug favored.
There was only enough time to get an arm in the way, and the steel cracked down heavily on her wrist. Jubilee fell back a step, cradling her shattered forearm in toward her chest. There was nothing left but the last dregs of her power, and she screamed hoarsely as she thrust her good hand forward, and the man's head simply...vaporized, leaving a cauterized stump and ashes floating down on his shoulders.
Jubilee had half a second to gasp for air, and then the final man struck. A fist into her ribs, right on the bleeding wound, and a twist of her broken wrist, blinded her with a haze of pain as he threw a punch right at the corner of her eye before throwing her backward against a retaining wall. A pistol came out of a shoulder holster and inexorably to bear on her face.
***
Sometimes it was easier not to try and break through shields, particularly when they were reasonably well-constructed. Sometimes it was easier instead to turn telepathy in on itself, weave a shield around oneself that left you inconspicuous, unnoticed. Emma had once read the Douglas Adams' books and had long ago thought of this particular technique as wrapping herself in a Somebody Else's Problem field.
It was particularly apt when she was using it to become somebody else's problem. "You people," she breathed into the ear of the assassin holding the gun at Jubilee's head, letting diamond wash across her, "are unbearably rude." A diamond fist curved up and outwards beneath his gun arm, knocking the pistol outwards and away from Jubilee. Even as the man began to recover his balance, Emma drew back her other hand and then slammed it forward and into the man's back, straight into his kidneys. A swift kick to the back of the knee was enough to take him down and he fell, first to his knees and then face-down onto the roof as Emma's fist connected with his temple and sent him into unconsciousness.
"Well," she said, glancing down at the various dead and unconscious forms that littered the roof. "That wasn't what I was planning for my evening at all." Switching back to flesh, Emma scanned and confirmed that nobody needed her assistance more than Jubilee right now. "I think it might be time to get you to hospital, Ms Lee."
And finally, Marie-Ange and her student Artie face Fer-de-Lance and her team.
Artie woke to the sound of the fire alarm, legs tangled in in the sleeping bag as he struggled up off the couch, staring at the men coming in through the door. Oh shit. This was so not good. He threw the first image he could think of at their faces and a decaying zombie borrowed from one of Layla's movies lurched toward them followed by bolts of lightning.
The men reacted to them as if they were real even as Artie scrambled behind the couch, grabbing the lamp from the end table and throwing that as well. It glanced off one man's shoulder. A distant part of himself hoped that they weren't actually friends of Marie-Ange. That would be really awkward.
The first zombie was Artie's, intangible and beautifully and horribly detailed - if it hadn't been made of light and illusion and desperation, you might've been able to imagine the smell of rot off it.
The second was less so. It could've been a twin to the first, if it's grey skin wasn't sagging wrongly and more the color of wet toilet tissue, and if the gaping jaw wasn't jiggling in a way that made it look like it had been built of gelatin. And if instead of one of the men passing through it like smoke, it impacted into him with a wet splosh, slowing him down.
It was not much - a distraction to follow Artie's, as Marie-Ange spilled out of her room, one of Wade's guns - or maybe Doug's - in her hands, unloading the entire clip blindly at the door.
And oh, god, Marie-Ange was shooting at them. Oh god. They were between Artie and the door. He couldn't get out. He took a deep breath and wrapped a bubble of darkness around their heads before jumping to his feet and sprinting to the kitchen, losing the illusion as he ran. He threw the kettle at them. Followed by a pot in the sink and, with Marie-Ange no longer shooting, their attention shifted toward him. Artie followed the pot with an ash tray and ran his hands blindly over the bench behind him for something else to throw.
"Black tins! Red tins!" Marie-Ange yelled. "Not grey or blue!" Whatever Amanda kept in those little tins, they were all marked with 'do not eat' and old peeling Mr. Yuck stickers - a legacy from when Meg had been small, furry and prone to getting into everything, and before they knew none of it would make her sick up.
The clip ran out, and she threw the gun at the men. Maybe they'd underestimate her if she looked panicked. The fact that she'd had the composure to shoot at them while in panties and a sleep tank top probably was going to prevent that, but she could always hope.
The whole exchange - busted-in door, zombies, thrown pots and wild gunfire had brought them - maybe half a minute of time, and not enough to get Artie out the door, or to the fire escape - nowhere she could be sure he was out of the way so she could unleash hell on the men intent on killing them.
Artie heard what she said and grabbed a grey tin, flipping the lid off and hurling the contents at them with the logic that if red and black were safe, whatever was in the grey one was probably better to throw right now. The herbs sort of misted to the floor in front of him in a cloud of powdery nothingness while Artie grabbed a kitchen knife and holding it hidden against one bare leg, he had a half-formed plan to try to blind one so that he could try to stab him or something and covered the men's heads in globes of darkness again.
The grey powder filled the air with the scent of ash, and Marie-Ange hesitated before stepping out of the hall. She'd shoved her feet into a loose pair of sneakers when the fire alarm went off, but she couldn't remember if the smog-infused herbs would work on skin contact or if inhaled. Amanda hadn't much said - they were 'a mistake' and the witch had just never brought them into the office for Cammie - no one else would want the tea they made, or the coughing fit that came when the tin was opened.
The men were coughing though - and trying not to, having gone silent, but feeling at their faces with arms that disappeared into Artie's black diving bubbles. The blackness was starting to melt at the edges - Marie-Ange wasn't sure how long Artie could hold the thing on moving targets and under stress, and so she moved in, a long knife appearing in one hand as she slashed at one of killers - they had to be, to break into this place - thieves would've waited until the apartment was empty.
The man jerked back, even if he couldn't see, he could hear, and grabbed at Marie-Ange, blindly hitting her arm. The disadvantage of blindness did nothing to eliminate the advantage of strength, and she only barely pulled away with a twist that slid the knife across the man's forearm and wrist, opening a cut into his jacket, and leaving the imaged knife bloody before it puffed out of existence.
Artie lost the illusions as the men grappling with Marie-Ange moved and they split their attention, one toward him, one to Marie-Ange. He didn't have enough focus to generate another zombie but managed an image of himself standing static and terrified as he lunged forward. He connected with the killer, slashing him across the stomach - Amanda's knives were sharp - before the world vanished in a haze of pain as the killer rallied hitting him hard enough to knock Artie down and behind him.
In her peripheral vision, Marie-Ange saw Artie lunge, and absently noted that the knife he had was sharp enough to cut through one of Amanda's horrible breakfast puddings like butter - that assassin was not getting back up quickly if at all, she could make sure he stayed down later - if she was lucky, he might stay alive long enough to get some answers out of him. Her imaged blade reappeared, steely grey slashed with red from the blood smeared on her tattoo, and she returned her focus to the man trying to cut her throat.
Artie slashed the knife across the back of the killer's knees and thighs, cutting down to the bone before scrambling back out of the way. There was blood on the couch now, he noted with a little distant part of his mind.
One down - even if Artie did not finish the man off, that particular invader was not getting back up - Marie-Ange focused on her opponent, trading a hard punch to her face with a knife thrust under the ribs - she could live with the black eye or cracked cheekbone, the man she was fighting would probably lose a kidney - if he lived through this, which she intended to not let him do.
She ducked a wild swing, and twisted the imaged knife, letting it disappear before she even pulled it out, and plucked another out of the air before the blood had colored the man's shirt, and retreated, taking careful steps back towards Artie. Marie-Ange's free hand flickered out two signs - fire and escape and she made eyecontact with the young man.
He nodded, sprinting to the fire escape and throwing open the window, knife still clenched in one fist. Part of him was appalled at the thought of leaving Marie-Ange behind but mostly, Artie was relieved to be escaping and suspected that she'd be safer without him in the room to worry about. The fire escape was frosty and painfully cold under his feet.
Before he could make it down half the ladder, the fire escape shook with the weight of someone dropping on it from above - a compactly built black-haired woman, who advanced on Artie, slashing at him with long slender metal spikes coated in a sticky looking white paste.
Artie tried to move faster but the ladder was icy and he was afraid he'd slip and fall. Fer-de-Lance twisted on the ladder, grabbing his hair with her free hand and smacking Artie's head against the side of the ladder. He was stunned and she snapped her other hand forward, stabbing the boy in the temple with one of her metal spikes.
Artie fell to the landing below and lay crumpled and still.
The clang distracted Marie-Ange long enough for her opponent to make one last attempt at her, weakly trying to grab at her throat, then hair, then shirt as she shoved him away. He crashed into a chair and slid onto the floor, leaving messy streaks of blood from his injured hand as he fell.
Before Marie-Ange could make to the window, it was already too late, the third assassin had already come through it in feet-first, blades out, and a sneer on her face as she looked at the pajama-clad Frenchwoman.
Fer-de-Lance spared a quick glance for the two flunkies bleeding out on the floor. They had hoped to take places in the Serpent Society, but had clearly failed their first, and fatal, test. No matter, they had accomplished the task she had set to them, flushing her prey out the window onto the fire escape. The young man hadn't been on their list of targets, but any guests in the building were to suffer the same fate as their hosts. "No survivors" was the instruction they had been given.
The sneer remained in place as she advanced on the redhead. The first kill had been easy, she saw no reason why this one wouldn't be the same. The spikes extended from her forearms as she assumed a widened version of a fighting stance, one arm cocked back over her head with the spike slanted downward to guard her face, the other curled low at her waist, the spike extending outward and ready to stab or slash.
She stalked forward several steps, savoring the power differential. Her target would be expecting an attack from the low blade, so instead she lunged, the upper blade stabbing directly at Marie-Ange's throat.
The foot that Marie-Ange raised to stamp the invader's knee was bare - the foot that connected was covered in the heavy black leather of one of Amanda's boots - a pair was neatly put away in a corner, just back from the cobbler, and while the originals wouldn't fit Marie-Ange, the imaged boot on her foot was a perfect fit, and as dense and solid as the real thing as it smashed into Fer's knee and scraped down her shin onto her ankle.
Fer-de-Lance twisted instinctively to protect her kneecap, a motion which robbed enough of her forward momentum to keep her thrust from landing. She continued the motion, pivoting to bring most of her weight onto her back foot, and bringing her low blade around in an arcing horizontal slash aimed at Marie-Ange's midsection.
There was no time for this, Artie was gone, either down the fire escape or worse, lying where she'd heard him fall. Marie-Ange pulled a staff from the air and the design tattooed onto her arm and swung to block the slash as she moved forward, advancing towards the other woman - and towards the door.
Not quite so easy as she'd though, then. No matter, Fer-de-Lance thought. Easy, hard, they all fell. She hadn't found prey yet that didn't. She snapped out of the pivot like a coiled spring let loose, slashing a diagonal overhand at Marie-Ange's torso from shoulder to hip, but the staff twisted to block that strike as well. She pulled back and circled counter to the redhead, keeping her target in front of her. They had each taken the measure of the other in that opening flurry, now it was up to who could make the other misstep first.
Fer-de-Lance lunged forward. Blades against staff made their reaches roughly equal. Edged blades and poison against blunt weapon gave her an advantage, though. It wasn't impossible to be lethal with a staff, but it would take more, and so she pressed the offensive, almost inviting Marie-Ange to get a strike in to a non-vital area if that was what it took to get one of her blades to land.
That was a valid tactical assessment. At least, until mirror images of Fer-de-Lance's blades appeared on Marie-Ange's forearms. The women clashed and parted. Fer-de-Lance blinked. This was not at all what she expected. She had invaded this woman's home - but there was no fear, no anger, almost no expression on her face. Coupled with the shifting weaponry, it was a bit unnerving.
Still, she had a job to do, and she pressed the attack again, grunting with pleasure when her blade hit home in Marie-Ange's bicep. She moved closer as the injured arm dropped, sensing the kill, only to take a long, vicious cut over the eye from the Frenchwoman. Blood dripped into her eye, quickly blinding her on that side.
Fer-de-Lance retreated, clearly uncertain. Her injury, while not lethal, was a very real danger, as she could not detect anything coming from one side. She needed to bandage the wound, or something, before she did anything else. She retreated warily toward the door, and Marie-Ange let her go, not pursuing.
She waited maybe a handful of footsteps, a few seconds, enough to hear the woman running down the hall before Marie-Ange ran back to the window, scooping up a phone as she ran, and punching in a memorized number. "Amanda! Please help! Artie was here, we were attacked." She was too quiet - it felt like she could not speak loudly enough at all, couldn't get enough urgency in her voice to make it clear that her student - her friend - was laying barely breathing on the fire escape, bleeding from the wound to his head.
"'M here." The reply came not from the receiver but from behind her, the witch already moving past her and climbing through the window to reach Artie's unconscious form. "It was a set up," she replied shortly, examining the teen with a wince. "Belladonna." Her face was grave as she looked at the wound to his temple. "Fuck."
"Can we move him?" Marie-Ange came through the window all at once, ungainly and awkward, and knelt down, crowding the already too small fire escape. "What do you need?" Her hand fluttered - reaching out to touch Artie's face, and pulling away before she made contact, and then reaching out again. "She had poison, the woman - my arm..." The wound burned, more than it should've. "I don't know what kind yet."
"Donors. Ones that I can use up." Amanda's expression darkened. "Did you leave any of these fucks alive?"
"Artie did." One of the men was still breathing - Marie-Ange wasn't sure if the one she had fought was alive, but the man Artie had wounded was - she'd saw him try to get up and fall when she grabbed the phone, but he was bleeding out "The other, I don't know."
"It'll have to do. I can stablise him, but he'll need a hospital. Get on that while I do my thing." Amanda looked up at her friend. "I'll try not to weaken you guys too much, but I might need some extra juice. This is bad."
"As long as I do not lose my arm, take whatever you need." Marie-Ange said. "I will call everyone. Do whatever you is necessary."
