Ausente sin Culpa ni Presente sin Disculpa | Ataque [backdated]

[x-barrier.livejournal.com]

The next morning, Scott, Sooraya and Angel go after the mutant drug gang.

It was a warm, sunny day in Tegucigalpa, which did nothing to help the part of town in which the X-Men and Cecilia now found themselves. The heat only intensified the faint smell of trash everywhere; the light brought out the imperfections in the deteriorating structures that surrounded them.

Their destination was a cluster of buildings up well ahead of them, set well off the city's more bustling streets and squares. There was foot traffic, to be sure, and a few small groups of three or four on the street. But where the drug trade lived, people usually followed. So, in general, there was nothing special about the home of Los Neo, at least not from the outside.

Inside? Cecilia would figure that out once she got there. While the X-Men offered a distraction, her plan was to go looking for the wounded, captive mutants that her three assailants had mentioned the day before. If her friends insisted on carrying out this stupid plan, she wasn't going to sit idly.

"Well." Cecilia crossed her arms, turning to look at her three battle-ready friends — none of whom had any idea what her personal mission was. If she couldn't stop them, there was no way she'd let them stop her. "Here we are."

She surveyed the three of them, her lips pursing as she studied Scott for a minute. The noises through the city stood out in contrast to their silence. "Good luck," she finally offered, placing her hand on his shoulder. "Call if you need any first aid."

Before anyone could say anything else, she turned and headed for a nearby produce stall, blending into a group of women investigating potatoes.

"Man, talk about cold shoulder," Angel mumbled as she watched Cecilia retreat. She knew the woman wasn't happy, but that wasn't their problem right then. They had a job to do. She scanned the crowd for a moment, frowning deeply. "Hopefully they're somewhere a bit more isolated."

"If they're not then we need to lure them into an isolated position; we can't risk anyone else letting caught in the crossfire." There was no such thing as acceptable casualties to Scott, and he would be much happier if they could isolate the gang in an area with no civilians.

Sooraya worriedly glanced after Cecilia, but then focused on the topic at hand. "I say we still need to get the civilians out of here as much as possible. And quickly. Those three were not that powerful, but if they do have Rave... we don't know what it would do to them. And which casualties it can cause..." Addressing Cyclops, she suggested: "How about we have an unexpected sandstorm pick up? I just need a quiet corner to shift..."

"We'd need some way of making sure they didn't leave with everyone else the sandstorm would scare off," Scott pointed out. "Now if we could lure them into a spot, we could use the sandstorm to mess with their sight..." Scott glanced around the street, "Dust, you think you could trip them up or hold them in place? If Firestar can set up an explosion to scare off the crowd and you can hold them down then we should have the space we need to deal with them before the police arrive."

Angel sighed. She didn't like making things go boom near innocent people, but she knew how to be careful when the situation called for it. "On it, fearless leader," she said, stepping back and looking around. There was a nearby alley about a hundred feet down the road. She disappeared into the crowd, trying to look as inconspicuous as a redheaded American in a foreign country could possibly look.

The alley was blissfully empty, and there was even a garbage can at the end. She stepped far enough in so no one on the crowd could see her, put up a flame shield around herself, and shot off a rather large fireball at the dumpster.

It exploded immediately, pieces of debris bouncing off her shield, and the street behind her erupted into chaos. Angel took off into the air, settling on the roof of the building next to her to watch the action and make sure none of their targets got away.

As soon as the crowd started to move, Sooraya shifted, the position of the targets firmly fixed in her mind. Rising above the crowd, she aimed at the first of her targets, close to two women with heavy baskets. She dove, packing the particles of her dust form as tightly together as possible in the shape of a thin rope. Wrapping herself around his ankles, she sent him towards the ground.

Manuel swore as he found himself toppling. Guns were useless here, but he had a back-up - taking advantage of his position on the ground, he grabbed at the inhaler hanging from a cord around his neck and took a deep huff. For a moment nothing seemed to happen, and then a noxious cloud rose from his pores, coating his body with an off-green sweat that was as toxic as it was malodorous.

As soon as she noticed the green substance seeping out, she let the ankle shackles go and roared back as quickly as she could. The guy was floored and hopefully Firestar or Cyclops could deal with him from a distance. With a whoosh she rose into the air again, searching for her next target.

That… hadn't been what Scott was expecting. Poison gas was certainly an unusual power. But effective enough if you were a close range fighter, which unluckily for Manuel, Scott was not. An optical blast lanced out, smashing into the inhaler in his hand sending it flying through the air to end up lying crumpled and crushed in the middle of the road.

~"Son of a diseased whore!~" Manuel exclaimed as his Rave supply was spilled over the road. He turned bloodshot eyes on Scott, hand moving to the gun in his waistband. He raised the gun to his lips and exhaled, breathing his Rave-enhanced bio-poison into the magazine, coating the bullets with toxin. "~Let's see you dodge this!~" he exclaimed, before aiming at the X-Man.

A small fireball flew straight at the gun, knocking it out of Manuel's hand and catching the sleeve of his shirt on fire in the process. "You know, you should probably stop taking out toys, we're just gonna keep breaking them." The words were amused enough, but the tone certainly wasn't, called down from high above as Angel hovered over the action, watching to see where she was needed.

"Stay down," Scott advised the young man as he flicked his eyes over to watch the other two gang members, "all of you."

Javier took a hit from his own inhaler, tossing it aside once he'd finished. "~You forget where you are. This is our turf, you have no power to tell us what to do here. Get the hell out of here!~" He raised his arms over head, and a large column of water gushed forward out of a nearby well. It exploded upwards and out before swerving mid-air, swooshing in a serpentine pattern as it charged towards Scott like a runaway freight train.

The X-man took a single step back to brace himself before he looked at Javier through the pillar of water, eyes glowing red, and launched an optical blast straight back at him, "What happens," he asked as his optical blast smashed into the side of the column of water deflecting it aside, "If you can't make us? Because," The X-Man started walking slowly towards the young man, "this is a fight I don't think you can win."

WHAM.

Scott's statement was punctuated by the sudden appearance of the X-Men's third assailant from yesterday as the gang member swooped from where he had been perched out of sight. The man flew down from above the sandstorm to barrel into Scott's side — at the speed of a flying bullet, no less — before Cyclops could further engage against Javier.

Oscar hovered defensively, wiping sweat from his brow, as he looked between Scott and his comrade. The broken Rave canister that dangled from his neck proved that the man was not only pissed, but flying high on several levels.

"~You Americans never do shut up.~"

"Come at me then bro," Angel murmured, shooting up into the air after him and firing off a shot.