xp_logs | The Trial of Jean Grey

Strike team four under MA goes after the security systems controls

Monkey Joe came running out, jumping up on Dori's shoulder, clicking happily. Dori raised an eyebrow as he went on, running around over her shoulder and finally settling on the other side.

"Yeah?" Dori asked, "Uh... huh. I didn't tell you to do this." She paused as he cackled on, "No, this isn't a game, Monkey Joe. This really isn't-" Monkey Joe's voice pitched up, "Okay, okay. He says it's clear. He's also in trouble. No treats for him."

They were moving as soon as Dori relayed the squirrel's report and Clint moved with them because that was what he'd been training for, right? This stuff, saving people. But it didn't feel much like saving people at the moment - Namor was dead and that just - how was that even real? Clint couldn't process that, he just couldn't wrap his head around it. And now he was here, half-trained and scared when he wasn't feeling numb, arrow nocked as they made their way toward the security system control building.

If intelligence from a squirrel was what they could get, Marie-Ange would take it. "We need to move fast." Which went without saying. "Nevermore, Rocky, I need you on physical support. If our route ceases to be clear, knock out anything ahead of us. Robin." Marie-Ange had limits to the ridiculous codenames, she was not calling a young man mourning his friend 'Cupid' "Facade, keep the path clear behind us."

"Fast as requested. Continue to advise if my pace is inappropriate." Korvus lengthened his stride, pushing off with enough strength to bound forward down the hallway several yards. Nandaki was still in place on his back to keep his hands free.

Artie nodded acknowledgement, watching the path behind them and keeping a glimmer of illusion over the group - he couldn't, in this instance, make them entirely invisible, but he could and did make it them harder to see. There was one good thing about this job - he was too focussed on his work right now to pay attention to anything else.

The sudden flare of green light staggered them; its intensity many times that of a camera flash, the light hitting like a physical force against them. In the midst of it, Manta made a gesture with her hand, and IDF troops began to open fire.

Clint's only clue that something had gone wrong was a shriek from a squirrel somewhere ahead of him and the tell-tale brightening that indicated an extreme light burst. His eyes adjusted immediately, his grey-on-grey world just looking a little lighter than it had before. Such was not the case for the rest of his team and he found he was literally the last man standing. "Crap," he muttered, scanning quickly to figure out where the incapacitatingly bright light was coming from.

Soldiers poured out of the trees behind them, apparently having flanked them, and Clint did the only thing he could think of to buy his teammates time. "Tarot, we've got about twenty yards to the building," he called. "Get there, I'll cover you all as best I can." He started shooting arrows, backing up slowing in the wake of his teammates as they made their way forward. He went for the knees, trying to slow the soldiers down without actually killing anyone, taking stock of all the moving variables on the field and tracking them as he let arrow after arrow fly.

Marie-Ange uncurled from the ground, but instead of rushing ahead as Clint had requested, she crept backwards, shaking her head back and forth as though clearing her ears. "Can't see. No powers. Ten seconds." She said, barely audible over the crack of gunfire. "Keep us moving forward. Facade, take point." The fuzzy grey patches at the edge of her vision were slowly edging out the red-black of blindness.

Around her she could hear the wet thunk of arrows, shouts and the clang of metal on metal - Nevermore, taking out weapons as he cleared them a path, and shouts and thumps as Rocky bounded from target to target, literally bouncing off heads as she knocked soldiers to the ground.

"Five seconds."

The ground grew mushy under their feet as red-black gave way to grey-white. As Marie-Ange's vision returned, so did her powers, and around them, a moving hedge of fungoid growth grew up, grey and white, speckled with liquid red and flaking black patches.

It took Korvus slightly longer to recover than the others but, when he did, he was back to his feet and bounding forward. The slick moss underfoot changed his movement but didn't seem to hinder him nearly as much as it did the soldiers. Using their unsteady footing to his benefit, Korvus used the flat of his gigantic blade to swat away anyone that might stand between them and the control room.

Artie stepped back and vanished. He'd been as blinded as Marie-Ange had by the flare of light but he didn't need to see right now. Korvus had been ...there, Marie-Ange there, to his right, Dori and Clint there and ... there. Up ahead, four feet above the ground and fifteen degrees off his right side was the target. That hadn't changed. Aim. Shoot and his eyesight returned. He kept moving, a pair of doubled images of himself appearing on the other side of the attacking group, drawing fire before they went down. They aimed and fired, visible and obvious. He aimed and shot, picking the targets out carefully, going for the centre of their mass, rather than the trickier headshots he could make at this distance and then, still hidden from sight, he began to pick off the men Rocky was knocking down. This time, he shot at their heads.

Dori was moving quickly through the crowd of enemies. She did the most damage with her legs, so she used that, Monkey Joe moving with her, nipping at ankles and clawing at eyeballs. She was more focused on kicking people in the chest, which either knocked them down or sent them flying. Despite being tiny and with a bushy tail and bright personality, she could kicked ass. And she did. Telling Monkey Joe where to go, what to do.

He'd counted off the seconds in his head as he fired shot after shot, managing not to lose his balance when the ground changed beneath him, but while he'd been training with Logan and Scott, he had nowhere near their level of experience. Clint didn't miss, but a few of his arrows went right through whatever it was Marie-Ange was causing to grow up between them. He crouched to avoid a spray of gunfire and wound up near her. "Sorry," he muttered.

A man rounded the corner, running at an intense pace, using the ISF's gunfire as cover. As fast as anyone could react, he was on them. Korvus intercepted Commando with a strong shoulder check in order to keep the mutant from overpowering anyone else. A swing of Nandaki followed immediately, keeping Commando off balance and on the defensive so he could at least be corralled out of the way.

Ducking out of the way of Korvus' suddenly pitched battle against a very augmented dude, Clint helped Marie-Ange to the building, shooting when necessary but mostly letting his sense of space and motion guide them to avoid as many of the ISF as possible. Dori was doing her thing, bouncing around and scattering one group before moving on to another. He assumed Artie was the one picking people off bullet by bullet. Korvus was still locked in combat, sword all over the place in what Clint's eyes told him was a pretty damn skillful pattern of movement.

"Go," Clint muttered to Marie-Ange, pausing at the entrance. "I'll make sure nobody gets in after you, we'll follow as soon as... whoever that dude is backs off enough, I'll get them in." Turning, he started loosing arrows again.

The mottled grey hedge-maze that had been Marie-Ange's only option during her blindness fell away as she pushed the fire door open. The sole guard inside the security room opened fire, only to have his bullets strike a winged devil that dissolved as soon as it was shot.

He didn't have time to aim for the red-haired woman just behind the devil - he was bleeding out on the floor from a pair of swords through his gut before the devil fully fell. His moans went ignored - but the frantic beeping of the bluetooth behind his ear did not.

"I have control of the security systems. The guard sent out a panic alert before I could stop him." Marie-Ange said. "We are going to have more incoming."

"I may be of little use." Korvus grunted out when he could between clashes with Commando. "He appears to be trained in hand-to-hand designed to defeat mutants such as myself." Despite the fighting and physical effort, Korvus appeared to be quite clear headed. "In fact, he may have trained to defeat me explicitly."

Artie was still hidden behind his illusions but a projection appeared, again (not him, this time, because illusions looking like him had already been shot twice. Generic soldier, holding a gun, and so what if he'd taken the image from a news report on Iraq veterans?) at the far side of the battle. It wasn't real. It was real enough. It caught the attention of one of the ISF and Artie aimed, making the head shot. It was just a target. He dropped that illusion, head aching from the strain and moved on to simpler ones, coloured lights in their eyes, trying to distract and pick off the newcomers, one at a time.

Stationed just inside the door, Clint picked off the newcomers Artie didn't hit - or tried to, at least. There were a lot of them. "ISF backup's arrived," he yelled over his shoulder, checking his arrows as he ducked back behind the doorway. "Facade, Rocky - they're coming at you from the left - give it thirty seconds at best before they make a push and overwhelm you. Get in here. There's not enough cover out there. Nevermore - c'mon, man. That big dude's backing you into a corner."

"We need to exit the building entirely, not take cover." Korvus interjected just before an abrupt turn, his blade catching Commando's legs from an odd angle to trip him. "I will facilitate if you can provide cover." He began to dash for the nearest wall that could lead them outside, trusting the team to do what they needed to.

"Cover, yes I can do that." Marie-Ange pulled the blinking USB device from the security panel and replaced it with another, tinier and matte black, nearly invisible against the computer. ~Dive to your left in three... two...~

She'd gambled on Commando not speaking enough of the old dead Latin to know exactly what she said. Korvus didn't acknowledge her but did roll sharply on the one count... and was replaced with the largest, shaggiest, angriest bear seen anywhere in Asia. On all fours, the bear's head brushed the ceiling and it nearly filled the hallway, and it lumbered forward, pushing Commando back with the abnormal strength of something that couldn't exist.

Commando shouted something that possibly only Korvus recognised as words you wouldn't say to your grandmother, and lashed out at the giant predator. It dissolved into goo, but just as quickly was replaced by another one, just as large and just as angry.

Clint wasn't entirely sure if shooting the big guy would be helpful, but he went with it anyway, firing off a series of rapid shots at Commando's joints where his defenses might be vulnerable. His arrows went straight through the massive, shaggy bear - and the bear dissolved just like the first one before a third took its place. The arrow didn't seem to have much of an effect on Commando but it did give Korvus enough time to disengage and, using his ridiculously large sword, carve a hole through the wall nearest the Landing Zone while Clint laid down suppressing fire.

Marie-Ange's nose was bleeding freely, staining her shirt. She'd wiped the blood away enough that her hand was smeared - and so was the card she gripped tightly. The impossible bears kept coming as Clint shot through and through them, reforming themselves from the same goop they dissolved into, in redder and redder shades.

By the time Marie-Ange was tossed over the shoulder of a frantically scurrying Doreen Green and rushed out, the bears were wet and bloody, slimy with goo and malformed, headless bears, legless bears, lumpy tumorous bloody bears plugging the rough exit Korvus had cut open for the team.