xp_logs | A Touch of Brimstone Log 3

Cyclops leads the first strike team against the bulk of the Brotherhood.

The Blackbird landed on Muir's landing platform just as Clarice returned from her last drop-off. The storm had abated slightly, but the wind was still whipping the sea into foamy whitecaps and driving the icy rain almost diagonally across the walkway to the castle itself and cutting visibility. The X-Men knew, however, that a not-so-welcoming committee was waiting for them at the front of Muir Island Research Facility.

"Ok people, no fancy speeches this time," Scott said matter-of-factly, "We know that Magneto and the Brotherhood are out there, but this time they've gone too far and now it's our job to take them apart." The X-man pulled out his visor and slipped it on before nodding at the door of the plane, "So, they're waiting and I'm not inclined to let them stay here any longer than we have to."

"So, we're the loud and attractive hammer. I love it. I say we start with the Southern Surprise? No objections?" There were nods as they left the plane, arrayed behind Scott. Magneto was directing the Brotherhood in attacks against the automatic defenses, disabling them easily. The X-Men had not gone unnoticed, and already several Brotherhood had formed up, preparing for the attack. Kane, Marie and Logan moved out ahead of the X-Men; they were amongst the hardest to hit. Marie particularly had built up speed, screaming towards them. At the last minute, Blink flung out three portals. To the Brotherhood's surprise, Rogue slammed into them from behind, the portal allowing her to hit at full velocity, scattering them. The other two portals dropped Kane and Logan at either side of their line, hitting the flanks and further disorienting them. Not only did it give the X-Men the advantage of a confused enemy, but the rest of the X-Men could close with their numbers during the attack, allowing them to get close before any long range attacks could target them.

It all was about the movement: dodge this, swing that, punch here. This was her first mission since re-joining and she gave up a silent prayer that the two men on her sides had trained her well, along with their fearless leader. It was important to let the training take over, to not think too hard, to just relax.

Some of the enemies she recognized, but some she didn't. All she knew was they reacted the same when given a swift punch to the head. And then she saw her. Mystique. Her parent, and cause of her recent torments. Bodies were milling around Rogue but that didn't matter. Rogue had a purpose now.

"Coming your way, Wolverine," she screamed out, as she forcibly tossed a body in his direction. She wasn't going to let Mystique get away.

When was the Brotherhood ever gonna learn? Going head to head with the X-men was only going to end in tears. Logan snarled as he ran into the wave of attackers, claws out and putting the full force of his adamantium reinforced skeleton into every swing. He heard bones crunch and screams of pain as bodies fell away from him. The others rushing in behind hesitating a second before filling the gap, which simply allowed Logan to cut a wider swath through their numbers.

He hoped his claws had retracted in time as the screaming body's impact into his own made him grunt 'cause the only thing on the menu today was heavy damage. He heaved the body into the heavily armored mutant charging at him. "They're still as stupid as ever!"

With the first wave already doing serious damage, it was easy for Angel to just dive in, her shield forming around her and she used it to ram into a couple of Brotherhood mutants, sending them flying. Between burns and general injuries from landing, they wouldn't be going anywhere. She whirled around, firing off a fireball and taking down a third. "Flunkies aren't generally known for their brains, though!"

Catseye roared in agreement, SabretoothCat form tumbling down for a landing and popping up eagerly. She spotted Toad hopping around and her tail twitched. Hop, hop, hop. In her most animalistic, least intelligent form, all she could think was that she wanted to catch this hopping thing and play with it. She hurled herself through other bodies, dodging her teammates and making a pouncing attack towards Toad, who was moving towards Scott.

Close combat was not Clarice's specialty and she stayed back as long as she could, tossing things and people through portals to keep the Brotherhood disoriented and assist the X-Men. "Rogue!" she called through the comms, "Drop!" she instructed, opening a portal under her teammate to quite literally drop her down on top of Mystique.

With no hesitation, Rogue let herself fall in the portal, trusting in her teammate's skills. It opened up in a way that allowed Rogue to give a swift kick to Mystique's head, causing the other woman to be unbalanced for a second. Taking the opportunity, Rogue gave a quick one-two punch combo before Mystique was able to regroup and backflip away. Even though they were in the middle of battle, there was no doubt that no one else mattered. Hand-to-hand, they were well matched, and they continued fighting for a few minutes before Mystique managed to get a good blow in, knocking Rogue back and effectively creating a distance between the two.

"They've trained you well." Mystique only had one tone of voice, it seemed -- calm, and collected. Even in the middle of battle, she wasn't the slightest bit fazed.

"Someone had to, and since you're a shitty parent, I had to do it on my own."

Mystique gave a laugh. "So you found out. It doesn't matter. You did well. You're a fighter. And you found a better parent anyways. Let's see how well you do against him."

Confused, Rogue was about to speak, before being completely blindsided -- Mystique had transformed into Wolverine, and yet the cocky grin on her (his?) face was still that of Mystique. "C'mon kid," his (her?) gruff voice taunted her. "Show me what ya got." The claws came out, and Rogue saw red.

"Get the fuck out of his body, you fucking bitch!"

It was on.

Scott had taken up position on the edge of the fight, utilizing the distance to keep an eye on the fight delivering assistance where needed. Raising his hand to his visor the X-man unleashed a barrage of bolts cutting through the fight as they flew to their targets. One beam crashed into Lifter knocking him down and disorientating him and breaking his concentration. Scott allowed himself an amused smile as he heard the Blackbird settle back down onto its landing gear as the gravity field that had been slowly lifting it vanished. Nobody was going to mess with the jet on his watch.

Several of the remaining force beams bore in in their target, first bracketing then colliding with Nimrod; unlike Lifter the mutant wasn't knocked down, just staggered as he turned a baleful glare at Scott from across the fight and turned to face the X-man taking a step forward as a malicious smile spread across his face, "Have to do better than that," he taunted.

"You've been waiting for, what, weeks to say that line? I bet when you came up with it, you hugged yourself in joy about how witty it was." Kane’s punch crashed into his gut and the follow up smashed across his cheekbone. "Seriously, buddy, if you want people to take you seriously, you need a new name."

He slipped the kick, but could only dummy up as Nimrod's shoulder slammed into him. He pivoted to strike, only to take Kane's heelstomp into the side of his knee, and then another roundhouse to the face. Kane had fought him enough times that his tactical chip was humming at full efficiency, making his already super-fast reflexes incandescent against the man. "After all, Nimrod generally means a dullard, moron, deficient of sense or intellect. Whereas Dominion means a governance of areas; the greater sum of the whole." A palm strike to the nose had Nimrod reeling, and Kane's boot buried itself in his gut. "Get maybe why I'm winning?"

Angel jumped as a force beam cut between her and her current enemy, sending the other flying. "Thanks Cyclops," she said cheerily as she turned- "Whoa." And found herself face to face with what could only be described as a squid woman. Before she could do or say anything else, Ms. Fingers disappeared, reappearing directly behind her and kicking her square in the back. The leather took most of the blow but Angel still staggered, whirling back just in time to see the woman disappear again.

"You know it's cuter when Kurt or Clarice do that," Angel muttered as she picked herself up fully, the air around her shimmering. When Ms. Fingers appeared again, her punch connected with a solid fire shield, sending a shockwave through her arm and burning her skin. Angel took advantage of her momentary distraction to hit her with a blast of fire, knocking her back.

For her own portion of the melee, Clarice was dealing with a woman that she wanted nothing to do with. She had a gas power, but for the life of her, Clarice hadn't quite figured it out. This wasn't a happy thing. Then again, nothing about this was happy. "Bitch, cut it out!" She snapped, part of the ground crumbling away.

Instead of moving away from the woman though, she moved towards her, moving carefully and drawing a knife, "I will cut you!" she warned.

"You'll try," taunted the woman. She wreathed Blink's knife in mist and then gestured, the mist turning to acid and burning into the metal. "I am the Mist Mistress!"

The man running towards Logan had a helmet half covering his face and a smirk that pissed him off. There was a humming coming from him that made Logan think of an electric fence. He had a bad feeling the easy part of this mission had just ended. Round claw hands extended toward him and Logan jumped to the left to avoid the bolt of energy thrown his way.

"I'll get you yet and then you'll be done for!" The crazy asshole kept sending bolts of energy at Logan making him roll and pivot and use his claws for every inch of agility he could get. "No one's escaped me. I am the Paralyzer!"

"I ain't just anyone." When the hell was he going to run out of energy? Logan had been inching closer with every attack and with the last one he leapt off the ground into a run bent low at the waist. He took the next bolt at the shoulder and he staggered as it sizzled through him like a thousand volts were being pushed into him through a thousand different wires.

Catseye pounced on Toad, knocking him down with her momentum but using it to leap off him immediately, avoiding a glob of his adhesive spit. As he jumped back to his feet his tongue lashed out to grab her leg and she slashed at it with her claws. Before she could move in for a proper attack, however, she felt something wrap around her middle and was pulled off her feet. When the wave of fatigue hit her a moment later, she knew Senyaka was on the other end of the energy draining line. Her healing factor fought the drain as the line was reeled in towards the Brotherhood member and Catseye waited until he had pulled her just a few feet from him before she transformed to her small cat size to slip the restricting coils. When she hit the ground she bounded through his legs, leapt onto his back and shifted back into Sabretooth Cat, her weight collapsing him as she roared in triumph. She broke off the celebration, however, when she noticed Toad getting away from her.

Finally free of Catseye Toad clambered up a wall away from the fight, his tongue flicking back and forth in consternation, she'd almost had him with her claws. The mutant shuddered, that had been way too close, he was going to stick to targets without claws, let someone like Nimrod or Magneto handle them. A flash of red caught his eye as a force beam ricocheted through the fight. Summers, he was always good for a target with that stupid visor of his. Toad wasted no time zeroing in on his new target, bounding from wall to wall like a hyper flea. Scott had no idea what was happening until he heard a whistling sound coming towards him, looking up just in time to take a mouthful of adhesive goop to the face. "Surprise!"

It was all Scott could do not the retch as the distinctive smell of Toad's good assaulted his nostrils, the X-man barely had time to react before Toad's tongue lashed out wrapping around Scott's visor and yanking it off his face. "Got you now Summers, you never learn do ya." Toad crowed dodging a near blind attempt by Scott to hit him, "Gonna have to do better than that if you wanna hit me, maybe open those eyes and take a look, but then you'd be hitting your own team, and you X-men you'd never take that risk." Toad scoffed.

"Except I wasn't aiming for you, I was aiming for him," Scott replied quietly opening his eyes to watch as the beam he had just launched reflected back off Garrison's back and slammed into Toad's back knocking him off his feet and carrying the slight mutant up up and away from the fight. Scott allowed himself an amused smile as he picked up his visor before discarding it with a grimace and turning back to the fight.

Logan would know that beam of red anywhere. It looked like they'd run into the other strike force. Whether that was a good or bad thing, he wasn't sure. Right now he was more concerned with skewering this asshole. He kept getting zapped and it felt like the damn energy was bouncing around in his bones. He couldn't move without feeling it.

"Give up, Wolverine. You're nothing but an animal and when this is over, you're going to be my pet, well trained and well behaved." The swarmy grin shot Logan's way made him snarl. He was no one's pet. He dropped to all fours and ran at the idiot, barrelling into him and taking his legs out. Paralyzer wrapped his claws around Logan and fed energy directly into him. "Not very smart."

Logan jerked and spasmed and fought his own body to pull back and punch Paralyzer in the stomach. The air whooshed out and Paralyzer released Logan to curl around his stomach. The next punch knocked him out cold.

Meanwhile, Kane was battering Nimrod, forcing the man to dummy up just to try and absorb the punishment. He rushed him, bouncing Nimrod off the wall of an outbuilding, cracking the concrete with the force. "So, about time to put yourself out of our misery by surrendering?"

The hairs on the back of his neck suddenly rose, but even with his strength, there was no way to avoid the titanic blow to the small of his back. He could hear bones crack as the sensation from the lower half of his body when dead as he collapse.

"Do you X-Men ever stop patting yourselves on the back for one minute?" Kamal stood over him, his body a heavy dense steel and his fingers interlaced to form the strike that had smashed Kane's spine. He swung back his hands, this time aiming for the back of the man's skull.

Fighting Wolverine/Mystique wasn't as bad as she thought it would be, as long as she pretended it was a danger room session. Duck, swivel, lunge, punch -- it was almost unconscious as she blocked her opponent's fighting. "I ain't been afraid of those claws in a long time," Rogue growled. "Ya ain't gonna beat me."

Mystique stopped suddenly, reverting back to her form. She looked directly at Rogue. "I don't need to beat you, child. I need to distract you."

It was then that Rogue realized Mystique was actually looking behind her . Twisting her head, her eyes widened in shock as she saw Kane go down. Without thinking, she burst into flight, managing to only barely deflect Kamal's punch, so that instead of hitting Kane on the spine, it went onto his leg. Rogue sent a silent aology his way, but at least his head hadn't been smashed.

Using her unexpected appearance to her benefit, she managed to pick Kamal up, and toss his as hard as she could toward the cliff edge. Looking at Kane, she shook her head and reached for her comm. "Dominion's hurt real bad, Cyclops. What's goin' on here?"

"Things aren't going as well as we'd hoped," Scott answered over the radio as he glanced across the battlefield at Rogue, "Get Dominion back to the Blackbird, we can use it as a fall back for the injured in case we need to pull them out of here in a hurry."