xp_logs | Fires From The Ashes

Doug's team is likewise ambushed by alternate versions of themselves

When they'd entered this residential area, there'd been calm and quiet. Now there were screams, and people everywhere, fleeing the scene.

With so much going on, it was easy to miss the sudden appearance of a group of five, standing proud and tall. They stood for a moment, the picture of order and stoicism amid chaos.

Then the goose-stepping started, four figures moving in perfect unison as the fifth took to the air. There was anger and hatred on their faces, and a familiarity that took a while to process because of the swastikas and iron crosses.

And then, suddenly, as they moved past fleeing locals with little more than a sneer, it became clear. It was them: Sue, Doug, Sarah, Gabriel and Namor. And they were Nazis.

Sue blinked at the group in front of them rubbed her eyes and blinked again, "Someone, please tell me this is a really really bad Halloween prank or magic mirror or something, cause she looks just like me."

"So this Apocalypse has clones? Or are we hallucinating?" Namor's eyes were not even on the group of alternates, but instead were dead-locked on Doug. As the senior member here, the man would know more about what was happening. The five of them had been sent to scout for Apocalypse's forces, but this was too soon after the party had landed. "They shouldn't know we'd be here."

Doug swore feelingly and gutturally in a language that didn't sound familiar to any of the others. "Nazis. Because what I really wanted when I woke up this morning was to meet Obergruppenfuhrer Doug Ramsey." He took in the composition of the two groups, even as his skin was crawling. "I don't think this is Apocalypse," he told Namor. "This is something else, I just have no idea what."

Still, the other group was in their way, and he doubted they'd find much common ground to parlay with Nazi clones. "Sue, I need...Nazi-me taken out." He'd checked the rank insignia and the way they carried themselves — his alternate was clearly the ranking officer of their group. "Sarah, I need to know what kind of tech they've got on them." He looked at Gabriel and Namor. "And then we take them out hard and fast — see how they like being on the receiving end of blitzkrieg."

"On it." Sarah replied, already reaching out with her abilities to try and discover the extent of whatever tech they were packing. Her range didn't extend a great distance but it was able to cover the gap between them. It didn't hurt that she wasn't trying to do anything too specific either, just a technopath's variation on sonar or radar.

"Nothing too fancy or out of the ordinary, not that I can pick up anyway." They had guns, though, which was more than she could say.

Sue just nodded and faded out of view carefully, and silently making her way over to Doug's evil doppelgänger, if she could take him out of the equation then life for her team mates would be so much easier. The girl was so focused on her task she failed to notice any warning signs until her forcefield ran head first into a solid wall...an invisible solid wall. The blonde's first reaction was to lash out with her forcefield, trying to overpower her alternate, but she was mere milliseconds too slow, as a second forcefield flared up, sandwiching hers, but almost instantly her forcefield connected returning the favour.

Sue let her invisibility drop away as she shimmered back into view only inches away from the other Sue; it was almost like looking into a mirror, if it wasn't for the way her doppelgänger was dressed. Neither girl spoke, just let out an unintelligible hiss as more forcefields piled onto one another. Sue's mouth twitched upwards into a smirk as she let her first forcefield vanish, letting the entire weight of the combined forcefields fall on her opponent, only to realise that the other girl had had the same idea. Both Sue's gave each other a shocked looked before their faces went blank as they slammed new forcefields onto one another, and let old forcefields dissipate. It was the very definition of a stalemate, Sue realized as she gritted her teeth, but she absolutely refused to be the first one to give way.

Where Sue had chosen the sneaky approach, Namor opted for the “hard” side of “hard and fast.” Any doubt about the situation was shrugged off with the mission at hand and replaced with a steely expression as he removed the outer shell of his pants to reveal a much more flighty-ready pair of compression pants.

An icy command — “Scatter and confuse” — and terse nod was all Gabriel got before Namor took to the air. The four German-flavored alternates were still clumped with military precision even due to The Sues’ Battle of Forcefields, but this provided an opening free of walls for the flying brick to strike. Where their own Kaiser of the Sea had gone to was unclear.

Namor crashed into the group of doppelnäzis like a bowling ball.

Gabriel sped into action, trying to push the shock of seeing himself in Third Reich drag out of his mind. He bolted toward the group of Nazis, intent on landing a few blows and catching them off guard. As he raced toward them, he caught motion in the corner of his right eye. It was a new experience, and it startled him enough that he lost focus and broke back into normal speed. It shouldn't have, because, it was so obvious: Hitler Youth Gabriel had speed powers too.

"Wonderful," he muttered. He glanced up, spotting Namor careening toward the ground, and powered back up again. Now assessing his own clone to be the biggest threat, he doubled back and ran toward him, hoping to intercept him before he reached the group of Xavierites.

Apparently, Boy Blitzkrieg had made the same calculation. Attempting to head each other off at the pass, the two collided and fell to the ground.

Doug was observing the tide of the battle, as his alternate was clearly doing from the other side. Strategy, tactics, body language - they both had the same strengths. Playing Magic: the Gathering had Doug familiar with the concept of a mirror match - two players who had the exact same deck going against each other. In those matches, it all came down to who played their cards better, and who made the first mistake.

Doug would make sure it was the would-be Herrenvolk.

"Slag their tech," he said to Sarah as he pulled his own gun and sent a shot whistling past the ear of the other Doug. Independent thinking - he'd given his team a general direction, and trusted them to make their own split-second decisions from there. Given the Nazi tendency toward hierarchy, it was likely the others would look to their superior - Nazi Doug - for guidance. This meant keeping the man occupied.

"Hey assbutt," he called derisively in German. "Come get some." He volleyed forth a litany of the vilest imprecations he could think of in Hebrew, Romani, and every other language of a 'lesser' people the Nazis had attempted to exterminate. Closing with his duplicate, he unleashed a series of aggressive, efficient strikes to the eyes, throat, and groin.

What better art to fight a Nazi with than krav maga.

"On it, boss." Sarah started to do just that before she'd even finished replying to Doug, reaching out with her powers and trying her damnedest to cause all of their tech to go haywire. Some of them appeared to be wearing communicators or earpieces of some kind, and they cursed in German while ripping the wrecked devices out of their ears and tossing them aside.

Sarah smirked and stayed back as Doug wandered in, preferring to stay back while concentrating on her powers for the moment, but she raised her sword and took on a defensive posture just the same.

Sue didn't have a lot of attention to spare for the others as she focused in on the doppelgänger in front of her, forcefields being created and vanishing at the speed of thought. But she couldn't stop a smile pulling at her lips, this was like the most intense chess game she'd ever played. She knew that her life quite literally was on stake here but this was a challenge unlike any other. Every move she made was countered, but she countered every move the other made was countered too. But if everything she did was countered then maybe she could just borrow from someone else. Instead of continuing the game Sue let all her forcefield drop, throwing herself flat as forcefields collided over her head. But where she might have been expected to renew her attacks she drove herself off the ground launching herself forward, letting her head collide with her doppleganger's stomach driving the air out of her lungs as Sue smiled, "Always did tell me to use my head," she noted wryly.

Sarah's distraction meant good things for Namor. His first strike had broken the group apart somewhat -- the two Susans locked in their battle, a little distance between the grimmer, European versions of Sarah and Doug. Once he was able to loop back, he zeroed in on the nearest open target: Dame Vale.

Observing passively from a nearby rooftop, Namitler shook his head derisively as he rested idly against a golden trident. "Komplett unsinn."

"Greifen die Schwächlinge!" screamed Netzwerk, the ersatz Sarah, as she leapt into action. While her tech was already messed up thanks to the real Network, she still had her fencing sword handy and she whipped it out, slashing at Namor with the kind of speed and accuracy the other Sarah only wished she had. The Namor she battled took the majority of these slices full on, twisting unconsciously in the air to deflect more direct stabs, and was left with a series of shallow cuts for his effort.

But now he was completely within her sword range, and the two grappled until Namor held Netzwerk firmly in a choke hold.

The utter viciousness with which Doug laid into his doppelganger, both verbally and physically, probably said a few things about his self-image that would need exploring in therapy. But that was why Frost Enterprises paid Dr. Gus Grim an absurd amount of money. And the tactical thinking was sound, because without das Sprecher to hold them together, the Reichsmutants were scattered and disorganized.

The fight between the two Dougs had quickly degenerated into a brawl that was all bloodlust, no technique - eye gouges, fists to the groin, and headbutts all featured as the pair rolled and grappled on the ground.

"Enough!" Sue slammed a forcefield down between the two Doug's forcefully separating them as her eyes blazed with a cold fire. "You stay here," she told the Doug alt in an icy tone as she flicked a hand at him spearing a forcefield through his leg as she turned to face her mentor. "Snap out of it Boss-man," she told him as she closed the gap between them. Doug had, was, really worrying her with the sheer viciousness of his attack on himself. "We need you coordinating us, dealing with them," she gestured to where her alternate was struggling to her feet from where Sue had sucker punched her. "not just focused on him."

Susanne Sturm vanished to lick her wounds, leaving Sue to counsel Cypher further.

"Dammit." Sue was right, Doug needed to get his head in the game. He surveyed the battlefield, trying to get a feel for what was going on.

Gabriel's head moved right as Blitzkrieg's fist tried to connect with his face. Concentrating on hitting the shit out of each other had taken enough mental energy that they'd both slowed back to normal speed. "How," Gabriel grunted as he ducked an elbow flying toward his throat, "did I - you - we even become a Nazi?" His fist moved toward his evil twin's cheek.

It was met by a gloved Nazi hand, attached to a speedster who had clearly been taught combat skills by the Reich. "Ich spreche kein Englisch, Arschloch." He thrust his palm toward Gabriel's nose.

"Joder," Gabriel muttered, his hands moving too late to stop Blitzkriegriel from giving him a nosebleed. He staggered backwards a little."En serio? Te uniste con los nazis?<" He wiped the blood from his nose and straightened. After a second, they resumed sparring. "Y en este uniforme? Que tipo de hipócrita eres?"

Nazi Gabriel shrugged between jabs. "Que puedo decir?" He let out a wicked smile, and his eyes traveling up for a quick second toward where Nazi Namor was perched, regally watching the fray. When he looked back at Gabriel, his admiration was clear. "Él es muy persuasivo."

"Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me," Gabriel muttered as he left his feet and launched on top of his Blitzklone. "Namor?" "Seriously?" He was shouting now. That there was a world in which he could be a Nazi was disgusting enough, but this was vile. "Freaking Namor?" Now on top of his alter-ego, he pinned him to the ground and punched the other him in the jaw.

Gabriel's yelling carried far enough to distract the grappling battle Namor and the expertly coifed Sarah double. This mistake cost him dearly -- Netzwerk had enough time to fish a small plastic device from her overcoat and stab it into Namor's neck. And then, as she blinked and Namor registered an annoyed expression, stab it in a few more times until it took.

Namor withdrew and clasped the spot on his neck defensively. He circled the brunette aggressively, sneering, but the look of triumph in her eyes cut through his boiling anger. "You. I don't want to hurt you, but you're making that far too annoying to maintain." His neck itched. The area around the small wound was blackening and veining outward.

"Ah, mein König," Sarah's alternate self twirled her rapier in self-satisfaction, "You have already lost." Her accent mangled the words.

The lines spread. Namor spasmed violently, falling to one knee. He punched the concrete so hard it fractured the blacktop. Netzwerk laughed gleefully in reply and bowed mockingly.

"You see, my nanites can self-repair as they eat through your tissue. Auf wiedersehen, Prinz des Meeres."

It was then that the real Sarah intervened.

"I am seriously so confused and pissed off right now!" Sarah exclaimed, fencing with her evil Nazi counterpart and trying not to get killed while also trying not to kill herself, because how did that work? All of the different languages that she didn't understand weren't helping at all, and she just wished that this was all over already.

Having overheard the discussion about nanites, Sarah, keeping one hand on her sword to parry, reached out with her other to better focus her powers. She pointed her free hand at Namor and envisioned shutting down the micro killers Netzwerk had injected into his body. It wasn't an elegant solution but her unfamiliarity with them and their complexity meant brute force was the quickest if messiest way to intervene.

"I think they're shut down, we'll have to worry about extraction later." she said, not taking her eyes off of her Nazi clone. It'd be a pain to track them all down, who knew how many had been injected, and just the thought of it had Sarah infuriated once again. "Ugh, I HATE THESE GUYS."

"Tell me about it," Sue agreed turning to face Doug's Nazi clone, "Things were going so well today, and now this," she gestured around her taking in all the Nazis. "This is so totally not the way I saw my day going," she complained as the alternate Doug limped angrily towards her before pulling out his gun with a wicked grin and aiming it at the teen eliciting a wince from the girl, "this is gonna sting.".

The bark of a pistol rang through the air. But rather than the Luger that Nazi Doug was wearing, it was the Glock that Doug-Prime (the urge to try and 'punch time' that thinking of himself that way brought on was filed away for later with all other unproductive reactions) carried in a shoulder holster. Single shot, center mass. "And goddamn stay down," Doug spat at his alter ego.

Rather than fall over bleeding, though, the ersatz Doug shimmered like a heat-induced afterimage, then popped like a soap bubble before disappearing.

"You stupid Nazi asshole." Gabriel easily blocked an incoming punch from the Blitzkid, who was still trapped under Gabriel on the ground. The Nazi spat out a string of German curses, all of which sounded violent enough that Gabriel had no problem taking a cue from an action movie and aiming his next punch for the other man's temple.

As he connected, he felt Nazi Gabriel go limp under him. He hopped to his feet, staring intently at the man's chest. "Still breathing," he said, more relieved than he'd expected. He hadn't wanted to be a killing monster - just a fight-to-survive-a-German-onslaught kind of guy. "Just down for the count."

And then, just as suddenly as he'd been felled, the unconscious Nazi hypocrite whose ass Gabriel had been kicking vanished.

Watching some of the Nazis disappear, even after grievous injury, Sarah finally gave herself the ok to rough, well, herself up a little bit. During her next class with Netzwerk she pressed harder, slashing out and cutting herself at the knees, enough to cause her doppelganger to fall to the ground. Once she was down, Sarah fell on top of her, smacking her evil twin - oh god, don't think about Jessie she had to remind herself - with the hilt of her sword until she blinked into nonexistence.

There was enough time for a few deep breaths before the mathematics of the situation dawned upon the group.

As they collectively turned to survey where the two missing alternates had gone, a torrent of water shot up from the sewer grates nearby and made a defense circle around where the alternate Namor stood restraining a venomous Susanne with one hand. He looked bored, but his serrated trident was raised defensively. The water rippled in a controlled band, distorting the light that sparkled off the metal adornments that supplemented the Nazi's insignias of rank. Shell-shaped bracers. A belt. What looked to be a crown adorned with shark's teeth and blue glowing jewels.

"I," and he said this with a tone that was both drawn to smooth over his accented English and to battle the contempt that flavored his features, "Demand parley."

"Demand." Doug's voice was flat. "Perhaps not the most apropos of words, given the tactical situation, mein Herr." He grunted. "But we will hear what you have to say." He waved one hand to indicate that the Sea-king should begin speaking, while gesturing with the other hand to tell the others to hang back, but that they should stay alert.

Adolf Namor was nonplussed. "You will be pleased to address me as Prince-King of Atlantis, Reichsführer of the Reich Ewig, Defender of the Purity of Empire." The alternate Sue struggled against his grasp, growing more frantic by the second. The tall, clean-lined man looked at her pitifully and his expression softened.

"This was not a scheduled invasion. We have no quarrel in this," and then he turned to sneer at his counterpart from this world, "Inferior waste."

"You've got," Gabriel grunted, his fists clenched and his eyes narrowed, "to be fucking kidding me." He was addressing Adolf Namor, but his sight was focused on SS Sue. She looked rabid. Furious. Malicious.

It was exactly how he felt. They'd been ambushed by Nazis, and orders or no orders, Gabriel would be damned if he'd let this end without some sort of fight. He started toward the pair of aggressors.
The water shield rippled only slightly as a speed enhanced Gabriel slipped past the Prince-King's defense and... came to a dead stop as the man's caught Gabriel's forehead as the speedster moved in for a punch. Namor squeezed demonstratively, but without enough force to cause harm. "Ach du lieber Gott. Listen to your betters or we can see if you simply disappear."

"One. Not improving whatever bargaining position you have by calling our home 'inferior waste'." Doug was in his element, and ice crystals practically fell off of every word from his mouth. "Two. 'Not scheduled' implies that you -do- schedule invasions. Three..." In mid-sentence, the last of the doppelgangers vanished away just like their compatriots, leaving Gabriel abruptly falling awkwardly to his knees.

"...well, that's just rude," Doug muttered.