xp_logs | Higher Than Hope: Voices (Reply)

Kyle gets ambushed while trying to sniff out Hope and Laurie. He doesn't find them, then he gets hit with a fire extinguisher, and then shot. He's having a terrible day. At least he got his comm back.

As he stole a quick glance around a corner Kyle reminded himself that his life was ridiculous and that it was just the most-fucking-ridiculous-thing, to break into people's rooms (okay, he'd gotten the key from Fred) and steal (borrow) their stuff so he could hopefully sniff out wherever they were being held.

He was seriously going to get the police dog training when they got home. This was just getting ridiculous and he needed to get the fuck over the 'dog' thing because right now he was making the tracking thing up as he went along. Maybe he could just throw himself on the Professor's mercy and have that little hang-up erased from his brain. He'd drink tea for that. Gallons of tea, even.

There weren't any sounds down the hallway, and he only caught the tiniest little hint of Hope in the air, like she'd passed through that hallway days ago - maybe weeks, definitely not hours. He hoped. He grunted a quiet 'nothing yet' into his comm and made his way down towards a stairwell.

It was the most stereotypical place possible to hide,but it was the only place. Suki was crouched under the stairwell, one eye on the door praying that no one would find her.

How does this even happen, she wondered idly, trying to calm her breathing, before remembering fully exactly how it happened. Hope. She furrowed her brow, her jaw set in anger. While she couldn't stand the idea of being betrayed again, the girl's name gave her an idea.

Focusing on the door, she waited until the door opened slightly. At the first glimmer of light, she threw her voice, aiming for 100 metres behind the searcher. "Who is there," she asked in trembling voice, identical to Hope's‎. "What do you want of me?"

It was Suki's goal to distract their pursuer long enough so she could find Gabe.

"Hope?" Kyle eased the door closed carefully, and stopped at the top of the stairs. He cocked his head, trying to get a better idea of where she was - the poor kid sounded scared, and there was a weird echo in the stairway that was throwing him off - usually he could place sounds better. "Hope, it's Kyle. I can't tell where you are. Can you come out, or are you locked in somewhere or hurt?"

"I am here! Help me, please! Hurry!" Suki cried out enthisiastically, Hope's voice echoing further down‎ the hallway. She just needed him to move enough so she could go up the stairs without him hearing. She was sure Gabe was there. He had to be. If he wasn't, then she'd truly lost everything.

Kyle tried not to grind his teeth. That was not ... helpful, but he reminded himself that Hope was probably scared out of her silly mind and that yelling at her wasn't going to do him or her a damn bit of good. "I'm trying to find you, hang tight!" He checked the stairwell below him - it looked clear enough, and started heading down. "What floor are you on?" He called loudly. "Do you know? Can you see anything?" She had to be close, if he could hear her this well.

As quietly and quickly as she could manage, Suki went up the stairs, almost floating. Her heart was pounding but she successfully managed to get to the top floor. She hoped the man would keep going down.

Now it was her turn to search. "Gabe," she hissed as loudly as she dared. "Where are you? We need to get out of here!"‎

She had to quell the urge to run. No, she wouldn't turn her back on one of her own, even if they weren't exactly friends. ‎"Gabe!"

Suddenly, a new voice that wasn't full of much hope at all. It spoke a single command, projected from beneath the stairway. "Surrender now."

Kyle stopped, and put one hand on the railing of the stairs, and slowly turned to face the new voice. He blinked slowly and raised his free hand. "Bet you're the persuasive asshat on our intel sheets. So... how about nope." The raised hand was joined by a raised middle finger. "How about you surrender, and I won't break your jaw with my foot?"

Kyle was then rammed upside the head with a fire extinguisher for his sins.

"I really should have said please," Gabe commented dryly as he uncapped the nozzle and turned the foam spray on the X-truder.

The noise caught Suki's attention and she rushed down the stairs. "Gabe!," she cried out. "You're okay!". She then noted the prone body laying at their feet. He didn't look as intimidating, ‎unconscious covered in foam. He would have one hell of a headache though.

"Who are these people?". A noise sparked her attention, leading her to discover a communicator in the man's ear. Taking it out, she smiled slowly. "Let's have some fun, shall we?"

Clearing her throat, she placed it in her ear and she used Kyle's voice, having heard it earlier. "Nothing here. First top floors are clear.‎ You guys having any luck?"

Gabe gave Suki his best reassuring smile, but it was ragged at the edges. He was covered in dust. "Trance's friends. We should have destroyed her when we had the chance, despite how much that makes me sound like a Scooby Doo villain." He hefted the extinguisher experimentally, considering another blow.

The comm crackled.

Suki winced at the noise, and pulled it out. "Do you think that means it's working?" She absently stoked her cheek, trying to come up with a plan. "I was up a floor looking for you, I didn't see anyone there. We could keep going up, maybe see if there's a fire escape or something?"

"Hell if I know. All we can hope to do is make a clean break and regroup with His Grace's men." Gabe poked at Kyle with a boot. "Up sounds good."

Suki nodded. "Up it is.". She threw the communicator down on the ground, and moved to crush it, not sure if she succeeded or not. Tur‎ning her back on the prone mutant, she pointed to the stairwell. "I think there's only one flight and then the roof. We should move fast." ‎ Even with the measures that the team had taken to protect them from the influence of persuasion powers, it was guesswork - guess that it was something psionic, guess that particular shielding would help, guess that there wasn't a sonic component that a sensory-enhanced feral mutant might not be vulnerable to.

That last one, they'd guessed wrong, Kyle thought - guessed - as he tried to stay still and avoid getting clanged upside the head again. If they thought he was knocked out, then they'd talk freely and maybe mention something important.

It was all guessing, and not getting him much of anywhere, and he was impatient, and also bored, and also had a headache, and also the foam and dust was making his nose and mouth burn. Which was a lot of reasons to kip up after the two teenagers had started to run away and shake himself off. He scooped up his earpiece in mid-stride, and then sprinted after the pair that had attacked him. "Comm breach, one of the kids here can imitate voices." He said, pitched as quietly as possible.

"Welp." The two teens had quicked their pace up the stairs. Gabe threw the fire extinguisher behind him in hopes that gravity would be their friend. He tried some commands:

"You're blind."
"You're dead."
"You cannot move."

No dice.

"Mimic, we need--" But then the feral man was upon them.

On one hand, the smaller of the two was a girl, and there was always that feeling in the back of his head that if he punched a girl he was an asshole. On the other, she was the one who could possibly create more problems if she pulled the same stunt on the rest of the team - or worse, Hope or Laurie - that she had on Kyle and finding them, and the kid that Cypher had mentioned as flipping and giving them information, and getting any of these kid who hadn't entirely bought into the brainwashing out safely was his priority.

So Kyle swallowed down the dislike of tackling a girl, reminded himself that he had lots of female teammates who could hand him his ass in a neatly wrapped gift box in a fight, and leapt on Suki, taking her to the ground with a shoulder tackle to the back.

Unfortunately, he could only tackle one. Gabe took advantage of Kyle's choice to fish around under his jacket and produce a different type of persuasion. There was an uncomfortable amount of gun waving as the sweet talker gestured as if he was screaming to his wide-eyed cohort before she fell.

It was true that Suki had no discernible skills when it came to fighting, but this was something His Grace had forseen. He'd had her listen to speeches, sounds, voices, anything that he thought would be useful. She could do Hitler, Obama, an African lion, and more inportantly, she could do a supersonic scream, at the very real expense of her vocal cords.

In addition, she'd always had the ability to almost freeze time in her head and see what was going on and work in an almost systematic manner.

Gabe had a gun. She had a voice. Distraction was needed. They couldn't beat this man on their own. As the feral man tackled her, she screamed until she landed flat on her back, the air rushing out of her lungs.

Kyle's head whipped back, and he stumbled, rolling over one shoulder and coming up with his hands clapped to his ears and his head ringing like the inside of a large kettle drum. The stairwell felt like it was shuddering and swaying - which he knew it couldn't be, which meant his eardrums had to have burst from the volume of the girl's scream combined with being right on top of her mid-tackle.

The second loud pop wasn't sonic, but a gunshot filled the silence left after Suki's distraction. Gabe had ears too, though, and his aim was thrown off significantly. He shot once more to punctuate what His Grace had called a necessary form of universal communication before shouldering the weapon.

The first shot clipped Kyle in the shoulder, the second tore through his hand as he grabbed at his arm and turned away. He twisted and tried to stand but the pounding drums in his head and the warm rush of blood between his fingers kept him unsteady and too slow to do more than clumsily heft himself up against the handrail.

Suki laid prone until she saw the stranger stumbling. Barely managing to get to her feet, her breathing still not regular, she gestured wildly to the stairwell. At this point, she'd follow Gabe anywhere, just so long as it was out.

Gabe allowed himself the luxury of giving the feral man the dirtiest of looks as he moved to join Suki. Psychic shields be damned, he gathered all of his willpower into one command: "Do. Not. Follow."

Then he allowed himself the other luxury of kicking the prone Kyle in the ear.

The two teenagers then disappeared into a conjoining hallway.