Laurie takes a gamble
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xp_logsLaurie sees a chance and takes it!
It was the chance Laurie had been waiting for, a moment when they relaxed their guard enough that she could get away and get help.
It would make all the unpleasantness worth it...it had to.
She tested the door handle and found it unlocked, and the hallway beyond unguarded. She'd been led around the place several times in the past few days and had made note of which hallway led to the helicopter bay, that's where she would be heading now.
"Ma'am." came a cordial and polite voice from one of the doorways between Laurie and the Helipad. Ian held his hands in front of him and kept his stance passive. Laurie was a prisoner, yes, but nearly all militaries and countries (all civilized ones at least) had agreed on treatment of prisoners for nearly a century. Though he was going to do his best to keep this civil, keep from escalating the situation...he wasn't going to let her leave, "I believe your assigned room is the other direction, and I am going to need you to proceed there at once. If you're hungry, I'd be more than happy to get you some food."
"And I believe that you're very much going to regret running into me."
Laurie launched a full on attack, remembering Garrison's admonishments about fancy footwork and the dangers of over or underestimating a person's skill-set. She would fight dirty, and she would fight hard, she had no time to be squeamish.
Even without his power, Ian could probably have seen the groin and eye attacks coming. Turning to lower his profile, Ian backed slightly away from the tight swing to his neck and lashed out, grabbing Laurie's arm. He didn't do anything with it other than keep his grip tight and keep eye contact with the X-Man, "I would much rather neither of us regret this, ma'am, if you would just try to-" Ian paused to spin under her arms, keeping his grip as she kicked towards him, "-remain calm and avoid further escalation."
Not what she had expected, but she'd been trained against all sorts of outcomes, including what to do with a battle precognitive. The key was to be as unpredictable as possible, to make your moves and the possible futures so numerable that seeing any one action was impossibly complex. There was nothing to it but to make a start, this fight would take her longer then she wished but hopefully whatever Gods or monsters were out there looking down, they saw it within themselves to give her a bit of luck.
She dropped her weight, making herself as heavy as possible against his grip and then wrenched herself sideways, uncaring as to the pain this might cause herself.
Ian had been keeping up with Laurie until she dropped her weight, losing his own balance mid-dodge and overcompensating in her direction, pitching forward on his feet.
Laurie followed up her drop with a surge upward and forward into his body, leading with an open hand finger punch to his throat before stepping back slightly to give herself space to work.
Ian was already off balance, but still his preflex gave him the split second he needed to block the attack and dodge back-
Right into the nearest door frame, ramming the back of his head into the solid wood and sending him groaning into a crumpled prone position on the floor.
Laurie bent and checked the man's vitals - he would be fine, if somewhat concussed when he finally gained some sense again. Having confirmed he wasn't about to die, she hit his carotid artery with her fingers. It took seconds for him to slump unconscious after that, and she soothed the blockage before placing him gently into a recovery position.
"I'm sorry, I am, it's just that I can't have you following me. I hope you get a chance to follow someone more worth your alliance then the Arch Duke."
She had to go, she was running out of time and they would miss her soon.
***
Clink
Clink
Clink
Azazel leaned nonchalantly against the side of the helicopter as he casually watched the helipad door, the keys to the aforementioned helicopter flashing up into the air as he bounced them in his hand a glass of Holocaut's finest brandy which he'd liberated from the other man's study was clasped in his other hand. The red skinned mutant looked like a man utterly content and at rest, if it wasn't for the wind plucking at his ears and tail as it blew across the open space. What a view to wait to though.
Laurie recognized Azazel from the other times he'd guarded her, or the time he'd been responsible for herself and Hope ending up here in the first place but she didn't have _time_ to be careful. She'd already left an injured person back there and it wouldn't take long for some kind of alarm to be raised. She would have to rely on her training with Kurt to avoid the teleporter. Like with the last assailant, victory lay in being as unpredictable as possible, not an easy task for anyone but she had to try. Not for the last time she wished her powers hadn't been made completely inert.
"Hey, ugly, over here."
Azazel raised his glass in Laurie's direction as if to toast her before finishing off his whiskey and tossing the crystal glass off the side of the building, "Finally, so kind of you to join me," he drawled patronizingly not moving from his spot, "I was starting to worry that you'd gotten lost on the way and I was waiting out here for no reason. Although," he shrugged dismissively and turned his head away from here, "there are worse places to spend a few minutes enjoying a drink of our hosts finest."
"So sorry to keep you waiting, I was unavoidably detained by one of your enthusiastic colleagues."
She paused a short distance away from him, knowing that of the two of them, she was the one with little time and none of it at all to waste. She would let him make the first move, however. It would give her a baseline on which to structure her attacks, and hopefully to win.
"Alas, I've always found them to be a little boorish and uncouth," Azazel sympathized, "I do hope they didn't cause you too much of a bother. I will speak to them later and tell them to be more careful when it comes to spending time with a beautiful lady. Rest assured, I will make the point most strongly."
"I have no doubt that you will, but alas I cannot linger here talking to you all day. Things to do, people to rescue. You know how it is."
Laurie waved her hand non-nonchalantly and moved closer to the helipad, keeping Azazel in her line of sight as she tried to figure out a way of maneuvering this fight into anything but a defeat for herself. She wished her fellow X-men were here, what she wouldn't give for Clarice right now, or Jean. Kyle could've distracted Azazel by being his normal foul mouthed self, and Scott could've blasted this windbag into next week with a well aimed eye blast.
But it was only herself here, and she would simply have to do.
"Alas, I must be bereft of your company so soon?" Azazel held a hand over his heart with a mock hurt expression on his face, "I see you're a busy lady so I'll get out of your way." He flicked the keys up into the air and stepped to the side gesturing at the helicopter.
Laurie knew it wasn't this easy, but she lunged for the keys anyhow, catching them before they could disappear between the cracks in the helipad. It was only a few more steps after that to climb into the helicopter and try the keys in the ignition. That he didn't stop her, didn't fight her at all was a prickle against the back of her neck but whatever bizarre joy he was getting out of this she could deal with as long as he didn't stop her. The engine sputtered but didn't catch, and she sighed deeply before looking out at Azazel and his mocking smile.
"Why?"
"Why not?" Azazel replied with a shrug, "Rudolph want's you to stay and it doesn't bother me one way or the other. Although," he smirked at her, "I would miss your sunny and uplifting conversation. Who else would spit and growl and try to stick me fuill of barbs? So now," Azazel gestured to the doorway, "Since you see, we were always ahead of you, and you've had you fun and little excursion would you care to accompany me back to your cell?"
"Do you really think I'll make it that easy?"
Laurie looked around the cockpit, hoping for a forgotten phone, or if not that at least something heavy she could use as a weapon. It would appear that everything had been stripped before she'd arrived - she'd never even had a chance of succeeding in an escape. They'd merely wanted her to try, perhaps to prove to her how very little choice she had, or how much the odds were stacked against Hope and herself.
Azazel shook his head, "Laurie, I don't think you understand how little I care about what you want to do here." The red skinned mutant help up a hand holding a new key as his eyes very purposefully shifted to look at the door to the helipad and then back to the woman. "You can agree to come peacefully, or I can leave you up here in the cold for a while."
"Then it's a fight then."
Laurie slid out of the cockpit and onto the ground, watching Azazel's eyes in an effort to figure out what his next move was going to be.
The keys to the door vanished about Azazel's person as he stepped out into the middle of the platform and cocked his head at Laurie, "If we must," he agreed tiredly, coming to a halt and raising a hand to gesture her on. "Might as well get this over with."
It reminded her of Garrison, and the fact that she'd yet to really get a hit on the man, if Azazel was similar in training, possibly with powers added then this was going to be a pretty short fight. Even when she'd had her abilities he'd managed to drag her into a place she couldn't breathe, she didn't remember much after that first encounter until she'd come too in the first room they'd had her in.
"You shouldn't be so cocky, I might surprise you."
Laurie finished her sentence with a running front kick as punctuation, knowing the he would probably avoid it, but it was merely an opening salvo - she did it to find out what he would do more then because she thought it would land.
Azazel swayed out of the way, slapping Laurie's foot aside and using his motion to spin a kick at her back. "Nothing here has managed to surprised me yet," he informed her in a bored tone of voice, "I don't see any reason why you'd start now."
Laurie moved with the kick to her back, allowing it to fling her forward but turned it into a roll before turning back to face him. He was fast, and his mutant power gave him an advantage that she currently didn't have. She could run now, and try to find a radio, a phone or some sort of vehicle but she didn't think he would let her get far. Wearing him out was also not likely to work, he would get bored long before she truly gave him a work out. Which left going all in, this would be no attempt to simply injure, she needed to put him down.
"Don't believe you know anything about me just because I have played your game till now."
"You've played our game?" Azazel scoffed, "Don't kid yourself girl, you never 'played' the game. You were to terrified to do anything else. You could have said no at anytime, but you were to scared, scared of anything happening to dear little Hope or of something happening to you." He flashed her a malevolent grin, all traces of the amicable mood gone, "Don't kid yourself, everything you did, all the way through, we knew exactly what you were doing and thinking. We knew you'd run here didn't we. It's not you who've been playing us, it's been us who've been playing you."
As he spoke Azazel punctuated his speech with a series of fast jabs, never quite breaking through Laurie's guard but pushing her backwards, just playing with her.
"Arrogant, that's what all of you are. Too damn arrogant to see that caring about another life is not fear, but humanity."
She felt no need to justify the rest of his rant with a response, she knew exactly what she had done, and exactly what she'd given up in order to protect herself and Hope. If he wanted to believe her a coward, or weak with fear, then that would be his mistake. Laurie caught his left jab with her palm, allowing her hand to be pushed back as she moved sideways to punch him in the face with her own jab.
Azazel's eyes widened as he saw the fist flying at his face leaning back to try to avoid it his face dropped into a smirk a t the last moment as he threw himself into the air, cartwheeling to the side as he dodged he punch and pulled Laurie forward dragging her off balance as his foot found the back of her knees taking her feet out from under her. "You thought you had me there," Azazel said smugly wrenching Laurie's hand up behind her and wrapping an arm around her throat. "Not even close," he whispered as darkness started to cloud her vision, "you loose.".
It was the chance Laurie had been waiting for, a moment when they relaxed their guard enough that she could get away and get help.
It would make all the unpleasantness worth it...it had to.
She tested the door handle and found it unlocked, and the hallway beyond unguarded. She'd been led around the place several times in the past few days and had made note of which hallway led to the helicopter bay, that's where she would be heading now.
"Ma'am." came a cordial and polite voice from one of the doorways between Laurie and the Helipad. Ian held his hands in front of him and kept his stance passive. Laurie was a prisoner, yes, but nearly all militaries and countries (all civilized ones at least) had agreed on treatment of prisoners for nearly a century. Though he was going to do his best to keep this civil, keep from escalating the situation...he wasn't going to let her leave, "I believe your assigned room is the other direction, and I am going to need you to proceed there at once. If you're hungry, I'd be more than happy to get you some food."
"And I believe that you're very much going to regret running into me."
Laurie launched a full on attack, remembering Garrison's admonishments about fancy footwork and the dangers of over or underestimating a person's skill-set. She would fight dirty, and she would fight hard, she had no time to be squeamish.
Even without his power, Ian could probably have seen the groin and eye attacks coming. Turning to lower his profile, Ian backed slightly away from the tight swing to his neck and lashed out, grabbing Laurie's arm. He didn't do anything with it other than keep his grip tight and keep eye contact with the X-Man, "I would much rather neither of us regret this, ma'am, if you would just try to-" Ian paused to spin under her arms, keeping his grip as she kicked towards him, "-remain calm and avoid further escalation."
Not what she had expected, but she'd been trained against all sorts of outcomes, including what to do with a battle precognitive. The key was to be as unpredictable as possible, to make your moves and the possible futures so numerable that seeing any one action was impossibly complex. There was nothing to it but to make a start, this fight would take her longer then she wished but hopefully whatever Gods or monsters were out there looking down, they saw it within themselves to give her a bit of luck.
She dropped her weight, making herself as heavy as possible against his grip and then wrenched herself sideways, uncaring as to the pain this might cause herself.
Ian had been keeping up with Laurie until she dropped her weight, losing his own balance mid-dodge and overcompensating in her direction, pitching forward on his feet.
Laurie followed up her drop with a surge upward and forward into his body, leading with an open hand finger punch to his throat before stepping back slightly to give herself space to work.
Ian was already off balance, but still his preflex gave him the split second he needed to block the attack and dodge back-
Right into the nearest door frame, ramming the back of his head into the solid wood and sending him groaning into a crumpled prone position on the floor.
Laurie bent and checked the man's vitals - he would be fine, if somewhat concussed when he finally gained some sense again. Having confirmed he wasn't about to die, she hit his carotid artery with her fingers. It took seconds for him to slump unconscious after that, and she soothed the blockage before placing him gently into a recovery position.
"I'm sorry, I am, it's just that I can't have you following me. I hope you get a chance to follow someone more worth your alliance then the Arch Duke."
She had to go, she was running out of time and they would miss her soon.
***
Clink
Clink
Clink
Azazel leaned nonchalantly against the side of the helicopter as he casually watched the helipad door, the keys to the aforementioned helicopter flashing up into the air as he bounced them in his hand a glass of Holocaut's finest brandy which he'd liberated from the other man's study was clasped in his other hand. The red skinned mutant looked like a man utterly content and at rest, if it wasn't for the wind plucking at his ears and tail as it blew across the open space. What a view to wait to though.
Laurie recognized Azazel from the other times he'd guarded her, or the time he'd been responsible for herself and Hope ending up here in the first place but she didn't have _time_ to be careful. She'd already left an injured person back there and it wouldn't take long for some kind of alarm to be raised. She would have to rely on her training with Kurt to avoid the teleporter. Like with the last assailant, victory lay in being as unpredictable as possible, not an easy task for anyone but she had to try. Not for the last time she wished her powers hadn't been made completely inert.
"Hey, ugly, over here."
Azazel raised his glass in Laurie's direction as if to toast her before finishing off his whiskey and tossing the crystal glass off the side of the building, "Finally, so kind of you to join me," he drawled patronizingly not moving from his spot, "I was starting to worry that you'd gotten lost on the way and I was waiting out here for no reason. Although," he shrugged dismissively and turned his head away from here, "there are worse places to spend a few minutes enjoying a drink of our hosts finest."
"So sorry to keep you waiting, I was unavoidably detained by one of your enthusiastic colleagues."
She paused a short distance away from him, knowing that of the two of them, she was the one with little time and none of it at all to waste. She would let him make the first move, however. It would give her a baseline on which to structure her attacks, and hopefully to win.
"Alas, I've always found them to be a little boorish and uncouth," Azazel sympathized, "I do hope they didn't cause you too much of a bother. I will speak to them later and tell them to be more careful when it comes to spending time with a beautiful lady. Rest assured, I will make the point most strongly."
"I have no doubt that you will, but alas I cannot linger here talking to you all day. Things to do, people to rescue. You know how it is."
Laurie waved her hand non-nonchalantly and moved closer to the helipad, keeping Azazel in her line of sight as she tried to figure out a way of maneuvering this fight into anything but a defeat for herself. She wished her fellow X-men were here, what she wouldn't give for Clarice right now, or Jean. Kyle could've distracted Azazel by being his normal foul mouthed self, and Scott could've blasted this windbag into next week with a well aimed eye blast.
But it was only herself here, and she would simply have to do.
"Alas, I must be bereft of your company so soon?" Azazel held a hand over his heart with a mock hurt expression on his face, "I see you're a busy lady so I'll get out of your way." He flicked the keys up into the air and stepped to the side gesturing at the helicopter.
Laurie knew it wasn't this easy, but she lunged for the keys anyhow, catching them before they could disappear between the cracks in the helipad. It was only a few more steps after that to climb into the helicopter and try the keys in the ignition. That he didn't stop her, didn't fight her at all was a prickle against the back of her neck but whatever bizarre joy he was getting out of this she could deal with as long as he didn't stop her. The engine sputtered but didn't catch, and she sighed deeply before looking out at Azazel and his mocking smile.
"Why?"
"Why not?" Azazel replied with a shrug, "Rudolph want's you to stay and it doesn't bother me one way or the other. Although," he smirked at her, "I would miss your sunny and uplifting conversation. Who else would spit and growl and try to stick me fuill of barbs? So now," Azazel gestured to the doorway, "Since you see, we were always ahead of you, and you've had you fun and little excursion would you care to accompany me back to your cell?"
"Do you really think I'll make it that easy?"
Laurie looked around the cockpit, hoping for a forgotten phone, or if not that at least something heavy she could use as a weapon. It would appear that everything had been stripped before she'd arrived - she'd never even had a chance of succeeding in an escape. They'd merely wanted her to try, perhaps to prove to her how very little choice she had, or how much the odds were stacked against Hope and herself.
Azazel shook his head, "Laurie, I don't think you understand how little I care about what you want to do here." The red skinned mutant help up a hand holding a new key as his eyes very purposefully shifted to look at the door to the helipad and then back to the woman. "You can agree to come peacefully, or I can leave you up here in the cold for a while."
"Then it's a fight then."
Laurie slid out of the cockpit and onto the ground, watching Azazel's eyes in an effort to figure out what his next move was going to be.
The keys to the door vanished about Azazel's person as he stepped out into the middle of the platform and cocked his head at Laurie, "If we must," he agreed tiredly, coming to a halt and raising a hand to gesture her on. "Might as well get this over with."
It reminded her of Garrison, and the fact that she'd yet to really get a hit on the man, if Azazel was similar in training, possibly with powers added then this was going to be a pretty short fight. Even when she'd had her abilities he'd managed to drag her into a place she couldn't breathe, she didn't remember much after that first encounter until she'd come too in the first room they'd had her in.
"You shouldn't be so cocky, I might surprise you."
Laurie finished her sentence with a running front kick as punctuation, knowing the he would probably avoid it, but it was merely an opening salvo - she did it to find out what he would do more then because she thought it would land.
Azazel swayed out of the way, slapping Laurie's foot aside and using his motion to spin a kick at her back. "Nothing here has managed to surprised me yet," he informed her in a bored tone of voice, "I don't see any reason why you'd start now."
Laurie moved with the kick to her back, allowing it to fling her forward but turned it into a roll before turning back to face him. He was fast, and his mutant power gave him an advantage that she currently didn't have. She could run now, and try to find a radio, a phone or some sort of vehicle but she didn't think he would let her get far. Wearing him out was also not likely to work, he would get bored long before she truly gave him a work out. Which left going all in, this would be no attempt to simply injure, she needed to put him down.
"Don't believe you know anything about me just because I have played your game till now."
"You've played our game?" Azazel scoffed, "Don't kid yourself girl, you never 'played' the game. You were to terrified to do anything else. You could have said no at anytime, but you were to scared, scared of anything happening to dear little Hope or of something happening to you." He flashed her a malevolent grin, all traces of the amicable mood gone, "Don't kid yourself, everything you did, all the way through, we knew exactly what you were doing and thinking. We knew you'd run here didn't we. It's not you who've been playing us, it's been us who've been playing you."
As he spoke Azazel punctuated his speech with a series of fast jabs, never quite breaking through Laurie's guard but pushing her backwards, just playing with her.
"Arrogant, that's what all of you are. Too damn arrogant to see that caring about another life is not fear, but humanity."
She felt no need to justify the rest of his rant with a response, she knew exactly what she had done, and exactly what she'd given up in order to protect herself and Hope. If he wanted to believe her a coward, or weak with fear, then that would be his mistake. Laurie caught his left jab with her palm, allowing her hand to be pushed back as she moved sideways to punch him in the face with her own jab.
Azazel's eyes widened as he saw the fist flying at his face leaning back to try to avoid it his face dropped into a smirk a t the last moment as he threw himself into the air, cartwheeling to the side as he dodged he punch and pulled Laurie forward dragging her off balance as his foot found the back of her knees taking her feet out from under her. "You thought you had me there," Azazel said smugly wrenching Laurie's hand up behind her and wrapping an arm around her throat. "Not even close," he whispered as darkness started to cloud her vision, "you loose.".
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