Little Paper Dolls: Storming the Castle

[xp-cuckoos.livejournal.com]

XForce storms the underground base. They have far more fun with it than should be legal.



Waiting as the front team took care of getting them into the building, Wade kept an eye on their rear. He knew Marie-Ange and Dom could handle flankers, if that became an issue, but it didn't seem like it would given what they'd seen so far.

On Doug's signal, the mercenary did a three-count and then moved forward. The base's position in the wilderness of Alberta made it unlikely that anyone who wasn't already on the premises would hear the chatter of gunfire as he began shooting guards. The location didn't really matter one way or the other, aside from keeping the local LEOs off their backs. These people had chosen to work for the Weapon Program, whatever its incarnation, and that marked them as fair game in his books.

One thing Dom had been learning was that not everybody at the mansion had as cavalier an attitude towards shooting bad guys as the Agency had. It was almost as if they were trying not to be bad guys themselves, which was just weird. Luckily her companions right then didn't seem to hold any such compunctions; she gave a little nod as one of Wade's bullets caught a guard in the thigh and dropped him like a hot dog from a street vendor's cart.

"Nice." And then it was her turn; she reacted on instinct as a blur crossed her peripheral vision, putting two slugs into the guard's shoulder and spinning him round towards the wall. She could've snapped off another round into the back of his neck but as he slumped down, leaving a bloody trail on the wall she figured he probably wasn't going to be a threat to anybody.

"Everyone remember not to tell Doctor Jean." Marie-Ange said, lightly. With Domino and Deadpool efficiently converting the guards into unattractive floor decorations, she took the time to flip through the handful of plastic cardkeys that Doug had handed out. In theory, they should unlock - well, not everything, not immediately, not even with Domino right there to be helpful, but they should unlock most things quickly enough.

"I won't tell if you two don't," Wade said, grinning. "Domino, I think I'm winning. Ten points for a head shot, five for center mass, one for everything else. Twenty if you get somebody in a lab coat but manage not to kill them!"

"Hey, no fair telling me the rules after the game has started," Dom said with a scowl, hastily dropping an emptied clip on the concrete floor. "That's cheating. I should get a bonus. Or a handicap. Or whatever it is that makes things more even."

"You tellin' me you need a handicap?" Wade half-taunted, grinning at her scowl. She was cute as a button, but way more deadly. He paused long enough to eject his own empty mags, slotting new ones in by slamming the butts of his guns into the proper places on his utility belt. He loved this utility belt. "Negative points if you get shot yourself."

Briefly Dom considered asking how many points it was worth if she shot him under this completely arbitrary system but before she could open her mouth she was distracted by another phalanx of guards approaching. Flattening herself against the wall she took aim and picked off first one, then another as Marie-Ange got to work on the nearest locked-down door. Sweet. Six points.

"I want points if I get one of these keycards to..." Marie-Ange slid another card through the lock and was rewarded with the chirp of success. The doors slid open. The sound of sliding metal was met with shouts. And the first guard to raise his gun at the now open security door was met with a rock-encrusted metallic creature latching itself onto his face and gnawing. "I want points for that!" She said, waving the card in her hand as she dropped down to allow Domino and Deadpool clear shots.

"Nice," Wade said, grinning as he emptied the rest of his current clip into the men in the room. Then he slid to the side to clear the door for Domino and reload while keeping an eye on the hallway around them. "What d'you think, Domino? That's like at least twenty points, right? The gnawing was an especially excellent touch."

"Gnawing definitely gets extra points," she agreed, darting a glance around the door and then stepping through once she had ascertained it was clear.

Except it wasn't completely - a white-coated man with a really terrible mustache was currently trying to make himself look very invisible against one of the walls. It wasn't working, unfortunately. (It really was a very bad mustache.)

"Hey look," Dom said, raising her weapon in his general direction. "Someone who can tell us what the hell is going on in here."

"Points if he pees himself." Banter - and completely unprofessional insanity - in a firefight must be contagious. Marie-Ange wasn't prone to this sort of chatter. Her chatter was usually the "and we are about to be ambushed, the stars say so" type, only less useful and sometimes creepier. "Oh. Oh that is my job, no?" In both Wade and Domino's defense, the alarms going off did mean they were going to have to prevent any further intrusion into the room.

"Damn," Wade said. "I might be losing." He braced one shoulder against the inside of the door frame to the left and quirked a brow at Domino as he did. Training one gun on the guy in the opaque windows on the other side of the room, just in case, the mercenary turned half his attention toward the hallway. He left a quarter of it on Marie-Ange, which left an eighth for both Domino and the guy in the lab coat.

Lab coat guy's pocket had a name tag on it. The name tag read 'Levine.'

Doctor Levine stuttered. "Uh -- that is. You -- you shouldn't be here." His eyes flicked from one woman to the other, then to the man, before returning to the redhead. "If you all -- leave. If you leave, I'm sure things will go easier for you." Left hand inching toward a tray full of open bottles, he gestured with the other.

"I wouldn't," Dom told him, squeezing off a round which as luck would have it just grazed the shoulder of the guy's lab coat, causing him to yelp and jerk his hand back from the bottles. "Now this nice lady's going to ask you some questions, and I suggest you answer them. Quickly."

Marie-Ange took two measured steps closer to the Doctor, carefully, slowly - and with not so much as a flicker of expression on her face. "You are going to tell me where exactly this facility would keep the subjects of illegal and grossly unethical human experimentation, and then you are going to lead all of us to whichever cell, laboratory or surgery has those subjects, and if your hand so much as twitches back over to those bottles, one or both of my friends is going to shoot your fingers off. The more details you give me, the more fingers you get to keep."

Doctor Levine had frozen at the bullet. He began to tremble as the redhead spoke. His eyes darted from her to the invaders with the guns, then back. "We don't -- " He swallowed thickly, reconsidered outright lying, and began again. "The center of the complex. They're... the subjects are being put into storage."

"Storage," Wade asked, tone incredulous.

"For observation, the final rounds of testing. Before... termination."

Wade had to take his finger off the trigger of his gun momentarily, lest he kill the man in front of him before they got all the information they needed. The mercenary looked back out toward the hall, his jaw tight as he said, "The lady asked for details."

The scientist began rattling off information -- five subjects, stasis tubes, gassed into unconsciousness, blood samples, extraordinary abilities, a singularity, the experiment fell outside the parameters of the organization's initial plan, too complicated, tissue samples --

Blam.

"Sorry, that was getting really gross," Dom said as the scientist slowly toppled to one side, the bloodstain on the wall behind him looking like a particularly gruesome Rorschach test. "Pretty sure we got everything we needed though, right?"

Marie-Ange nodded, and bent to cut the lanyard off the Doctor's neck. "Everything and some keycards. Hopefully nothing here requires fingerprints or retinal scans." She nudged the body and huffed. "We are not carrying eyeballs around in one of Wade's pouches, that is just disgusting."

"I could take his hand," Wade offered, checking his clip to see if he needed to reload before gesturing to the bowie knife on his belt. "Probably wouldn't bleed too bad."

"Wow, what a useful guy. Stone cold dead and he's still giving us a hand." Dom frowned and shook her head. "No, that sucks. Damnit, no one told me I needed to stock up on puns. Better just take it and get out of here-- no wait, I got it! Someone get his digits! Okay, that'll have to do. Let's go."