X-Men Mission: Fall of the Mutants, Part 2

[xp_daytripper]

The X-Men seem to have the upper hand. Until the humans they’ve saved turn against them all and former foes join with the X-Men against the new threat.



With her attention focused on the ant-sized Morlock now safely trapped in a bottle, the redhead was a clear target for the uniformed man who had been slumped against the side of the scow. He raised his gun, squeezing off a shot at her head.

Jean could feel it, the idea of closure, of the removal of a target. It felt like the mental equivalent of taking a plunge. With her telepathy still slightly off, her walls were a little thinner than usual, and it was this transparency that allowed her to pick up on the man's intent.

Before she even heard the click she had turned, and her mind made the jump for her out of instinct due to the prospect of danger as she brought up a telekinetic shield. The bullet bounced off the shield and Jean reflexively dropped the bottle, telekinetically yanking the gun from the man's hand so he couldn't try to fire off another shot.

The bottle hit the deck and ricocheted off to one side; a few seconds later the captured Morlock came tumbling out, rapidly growing in size until he was once again full size - and human shaped. He launched himself off the deck and for a moment it seemed uncertain who he was aiming at: the X-Man or her assailant. Luckily it seemed his original target remained as his limbs once against elongated to wrap around the agent, winding and winding until the downed man began to choke and sputter.

"That's enough, he's down and out. No need to strangle him any further," Scott stated staring at the Morlock his eyes glowing red with restrained energy, "Let him go now before you do something you'll regret."

Catching movement in the corner of her eye, Clarice turned slightly in time for taser barbs to catch her shoulder and back. The body armor she wore catching the bulk of the barbs and electricity, but enough getting through to be a problem. Damn humans. Screaming, she tried to work her portals to cut the taser wires, with no luck yet.

The woman's hands around her throat loosened just enough for Pester to take a breath and lift a leg, burying her foot in Clarice's stomach. She used the momentum from the kick to back flip away from her captor completely, landing unsteadily and gasping for breath as she tried to say, "See...what...happens? You help...them...and they do this!"

As she spoke the remaining rats - about five, she noted with some sadness - rallied around her and dove at the man tasing Clarice. He screamed as they landed on his face, biting and scratching.

A woman charged past the fallen man, almost casually ripping one of the rats away from his face and breaking its neck with a squeeze of her fist. "Concentrate fire on the leathers!" She said, as a volley of bullets rained down on the X-Men. There were a couple of clicks as grenade pins were pulled and the oblong canisters bounced towards them. Dominion scooped one up with ease and broke a man's nose with a sidearm toss. The other bounced in a strange direction, and he was only able to slam a mangled dumpster over it before it exploded.

The dumpster was torn apart in the blast, and Kane went down as a sizable dagger-shaped piece of metal punched into his torso.

"Who's the good guys?" Ape asked, his tone bewildered despite the chaos and violence all around him. At Scott's instruction he had loosened his grip on the uniformed man, lowering him to the ground. As Ape pushed himself to his feet his opponent cracked open an eye and, sensing an opportunity, threw himself to one side, rolling until he reached the edge of the scow. Without a moment's hesitation he threw himself over the edge, hitting the water with a loud splash a moment later.

"One of the bad guys got away! I don't know who to fight!"

"Same guys as we started with!" Sunder bellowed. "But leave the leather people alone! Try and grab one of these human fucks, Cal will want to question them about this!"

Sparing a glance to their opponents, turned...she wasn't really sure, Jean sprinted over to Garrison after seeing blood.

"Dominion!" she said. She'd hoped she wouldn't have use her medkit this mission...Heh. Well that was wishful thinking.

"Let me see."

Erg's throbbing head was pushed to the back burner when all hell broke lose. The Interlopers were just as much targets as they were now. Both sides had their hands full of the no longer harmless uniformed shit who had started all this. Too much risk of electrifying friends and current allies alike if he shot off electricity blasts randomly. He grinned when he spotted a fuel canister near the woman yelling orders. Time for a more level playing field. He double checked his angle on the canister then fired off a blast, trying to will every inch of electricity he had into it.

The canister went up in a great gout of flame. It washed over the woman directing the violence. Unfortunately for her, unlike many of her men in tactical gear, she had been operating in street clothes. Including a puffy warm winter jacket. A puffy warm jacket filled with goose down. Her scream was long and undulating as the jacket cost fire immediately, turning her into a human torch. She staggered to the side, still screaming in a raw, crazed voice. Her knees gave way under her and she fell, toppling sideways off the scow and into the dark, frigid waters of the East River.

Gasping for air, Clarice turned, eyes hard as she reached to throw a portal towards the guy that tased her. She wouldn't kill a human, but porting him out to Uzbekistan wasn't unreasonable. He'd get home. Eventually.

She didn't get the opportunity though as the man crunched down, then a moment later, began to spasm and fall.

Scrambling over, she immediately checked for a pulse, her own pains ignored to treat the man. Pulling his helmet off, she sighed, then wrenched his mouth open with a couple fingers, unsurprised to find foam and a hollow tooth. She hadn't realized that those things were still done. Guess they were a classic for a reason.

Pester watched in shock and disgust as all around them humans started to fall, making no move to help. Good riddance, a small part of her mind said. Less humans in the world and less work for them to do.

The world would be better off without them.





Things happened with confusing speed. At one moment, Tar-Baby was wrestling with the clawed man in the black leather uniform, and then the next a sudden shock went through his body. He was immune to cuts and blows, but not from electricity, and the cattle prod had been used with brutal efficiency. Still twitching, Tar-Baby retracted his body and curled into a ball, shuddering.

"I'll make sure you stay down, freak," muttered the man in the navy uniform who had, up until that moment been lying on the deck, apparently unconscious. And he wasn't the only one - across the scow, the uniformed men and women who had been cowering for safety or apparently injured were turning on the Morlocks. And on the X-Men who had come to save them.

Logan was covered from head to toe in disgusting goop he didn't want to think too hard about. His healing factor had kept the worst of the current from getting to him. He was just tingling all over but even that was fading rapidly. Where the hell had the help been when this all started? Something about all this seemed off. He attempted to shake off the goop. "Thanks for the help, but ya didn't needta get involved. We--" He trailed off as the uniform brandished the cattle prod and started toward Logan.

A red disk caused the cattle prod to short circuit and explode."I don't think they're friendly," called Jennie, eyeing the advancing crowd. The world had gone red with bad probabilities.

One of the advantages of senses like Callisto's was it didn't take long to switch track. With barely a glance at her former opponents, she shifted focus seamlessly, launching herself at the nearest uniform.

Sooraya stopped the whip she had been about to send towards Callisto as she launched herself away, then turned towards the advancing uniforms. The cattleprods they sported would not hurt her, so she launched herself forward, lashing out with thin sharp tendril of sand at the hands that were holding the electric menaces.

There were other weapons than the prods. Taking advantage of Sooraya's focus in front of her, other uniformed figure, this one a woman, levelled a gun at the young woman's head.

Logan loosed a roar and launched himself at the woman the moment he heard the click of a round being chambered. This had been mutant against mutant. Powersets aside, that usually meant a level playing field. Guns wielded by non-mutants? Raised the stakes in the direction of dead. And that wasn't happening if he had anything to say about it.

There was an explosion of red and the two other guns in the crowd jammed, courtesy of two simultaneously flung discs. Jennie snap-kicked the first man in the throat as he stared balefully at his useless weapon. "On your left!" she called to their former adversary.

Callisto ducked and spun, swiping her leg out and taking her new attacker of his feet before turning and launching back at another of their human adversaries, bearing him to the ground with a sickening crack. She wasn't holding back this time.

Sending the two cattle-prod holders to the ground, Sooraya realized she really needed to find a move that would allow her disable her opponents without gashing them open. Something to work on in the Danger Room though and she pushed the thought aside to focus on the new thread. Flowing inside the guns, she disabled them, then set about sending them to the ground as well.

The woman slammed to the ground, immediately unconscious from the weight of Logan's adamantium laced skeleton. He came out of his crouch quick and looked for further threats. Goop man's prone body was still unmoving and more of the uniformed goons were moving in. Logan scowled and started back toward Goop Man, throwing punches to put down the uniforms with no hesitation. Better them down and not dead than anything else for all parties.

Except they weren't remaining down. Faced with capture, the uniformed men and women were dropping like flies, crunching down on suicide caps, using their guns to take their own lives. Within moments, the mutants found themselves looking over a deck littered with corpses.